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THE  PATH  OF  LABOR 


The  Path  of  Labor 

THEME 

Christianity  and  The  World's  Workers 
"/  am  among  you  as  he  that  serveth" 

Authors 

M.  KATHARINE  BENNETT 

GRACE  SCRIBNER 

JOHN  E.  CALFEE 

A.  J.  McKELWAY 

L.  H.  HAMMOND 

MIRIAM  L.  WOODBERRY 

WALTER  C.  RAUSCHENBUSCH 


COUNCIL  OF  WOMEN  FOR  HOME  MISSIONS 
New  York,  N.  Y. 


Copyright,  1918 

Council  of  Women  for  Home  Missions 

New  York 


HNSl 


FOREWORD 

Those  who  labored  with  such  desire  and  earnestness  for  the 
selection  of  a  theme  for  the  textbooks  for  1918-1919,  that  should 
present  not  only  a  vital  but  a  paramount  issue  to  the  church  at 
this  time  when  only  great  realities  and  Issues  claim  serious 
thought,  chose  better  than  they  knew  when  they  elected  Chris- 
tianity and  the  World's  Workers. 

It  is  generally  conceded  that  the  most  decisive  single  factor 
in  the  world  contest  today  is  that  of  Labor.  That  there  is  always 
danger  of  over  emphasis  by  any  group  having  the  power  in  the 
body  politic  is  axiomatic. 

It  becomes  therefore  even  more  important  now  than  when  the 
theme  was  suggested  (nearly  two  years  ago)  for  our  church  con- 
stituency to  address  itself  to  such  a  study  of  economic  relation- 
ships as  shall  open  the  way  for  a  more  complete  understanding  of 
the  fundamental  rights  and  facts  involved,  that  a  basis  of  think- 
ing may  be  attained  whereby  the  mutual  welfare  of  all  society 
may  be  advanced  along  the  line  of  a  Christian  democracy. 

"Christian"  because  the  body  of  influence  set  in  motion  by 
Christ  is  the  greatest  spiritual  force  in  the  life  of  humanity,  and 
upon  it  depends  the  world's  hope  for  redemption  from  oppression, 
injustice  and  war. 

At  the  outset  of  our  thinking  on  this  theme  we  might  profitably 
seek  a  definition  of  the  term  "Christianity,"  for  this  word  which 
calls  so  inspiringly  to  millions  of  people  carries  a  sinister  re- 
minder of  pogroms  and  persecutions  to  millions  of  others. 
The    Rev.    Dr.    Charles    Jefferson    of    New    York    City,    says: 

"Christianity  is  a  large  word,  and  it  cannot  be  defined  in  a  sen- 
tence for  the  reason  that  it  is  used  in  different  meanings  by 
different  persons,  and  also  by  the  same  person  on  different  occa- 
sions, and  for  different  purposes.     In  one  sense  Christianity  is 

v 


the  example  and  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ.  What  he  is  and  what  he 
taught  constitutes  pure  and  undefiled  Christianity.  To  know  what 
Christianity  is  we  must  look  at  Jesus  Christ  and  study  his  funda- 
mental principles. 

"But  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ  has  been  in  the  world  1900 
years  and  has  worked  itself  out  into  a  mass  of  institutions  and 
ceremonies  and  creeds.  All  of  these  taken  together  are  often 
called  Christianity.  For  instance,  the  Christianity  of  the  United 
States  would  include  the  whole  universal  church  in  the  United 
States,  with  its  worship  and  its  achievements. 

"While  Christianity  in  the  narrower  sense  must  commend  itself 
to  everybody's  heart,  Christianity  in  the  larger  sense  has  many 
imperfections,  and  is  capable  of  many  reformations  and  improve- 
ments." 

The  rapidly  increasing  participation  of  women  in  all  forms  of 
industry  is  apparent  to  everyone.  Mrs.  Hilda  Richards,  Chief  of 
the  Woman's  Division  of  the  Federal  Department  of  Labor,  says : 
"Assuming  that  the  duration  of  the  war  is  three  years,  it  is  safe 
to  say  that  the  increase  of  women  in  industry  will  be  doubled 
and  amount  to  three  millions  in  this  country." 

The  Council  of  Women  for  Home  Missions  in  sending  forth 
this  latest  volume  of  its  Mission  Study  Books  does  so  with  the 
eager  hope  that  it  may  serve  to  interpret  women  in  their  various 
forms  of  service  to  each  other,  and  be  another  influence  in 
making  Christianity  the  keystone  of  the  changing  social  order. 

Publication  Committee. 


VI 


CONTENTS 

I.     The  Call  to  Service Page  3 

II.     In   City   Industries Page  27 

III.  In  Mountains  and  Mills Page  83 

IV.  Among  Negro  Laborers Page  in 

V.     In  Lumber  Camps  and  Mines Page  139 

VI.     Justice  and  Brotherhood Page  165 

Bibliography Page  188 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Family  of  Cotton  Pickers,  Oklahoma Frontispiece 

Street  Trades Page  32 

Women  Packing  Salmon Page  56 

A  Road  in  the  Mountains Page  88 

Worker  in  Modern  Cotton  Mill Page  96 

Model  Teacher's  Home Page  116 

School  Farm,  Brunswick  County,  Virginia. ..  .Page  116 

Development  of  a  Lumber  Camp Page  144 

Mining  in  the  Streets  of  Nome Page  152 


I 

THE  CALL  TO  SERVICE 
M.  KATHARINE  BENNETT 


"In  the  sweat  of  thy  face  shalt  thou  eat  bread,  till  thou  return 
unto  the  ground." — Genesis  3:19. 

"For  even  when  we  were  with  you,  this  we  commanded  you, 
that  if  any  would  not  work,  neither  should  he  eat." — II  Thes- 
salonians  3:10. 

"What  profit  hath  a  man  of  all  his  labour  which  he  taketh 
under  the  sun?" — Ecclesiastes  1:3. 

"Wherefore  I  perceive  that  there  is  nothing  better,  than  that 
a  man  should  rejoice  in  his  own  works;  for  that  is  his  portion: 
for  who  shall  bring  him  to  see  what  shall  be  after  him?"— 
Ecclesiastes  3  :22. 

"The  labour  of  the  righteous  tendeth  to  life."— Proverbs  10:16. 

"For  we  are  laborers  together  with  God." — 1  Corinthians  3 :9. 

"Come  unto  Me,  all  ye  that  labour  and  are  heavy  laden,  and 
I  will  give  you  rest." — Matthew  11:28. 

"While  we  are  fighting  for  freedom  we  must  see,  among  other 
things,  that  labor  is  free;  and  that  means  a  number  of  inter- 
esting tilings.  It  means,  not  only  that  we  must  do  what  we 
have  declared  our  purpose  to  do— see  that  the  conditions  of  labor 
are  not  rendered  more  onerous  by  the  war — but  also  that  we 
shall  see  to  it  that  the  instrumentalities  by  which  the  conditions 
of  labor  are  improved  are  not  blocked  or  checked." — President 
Woodrow  Wilson  in  his  speech  before  American  Federation  of 
Labor,  November,  1917. 


THE  PATH  OF  LABOR 

i 

THE  CALL  TO  SERVICE 

"In  the  sweat  of  thy  face  shalt  thou  eat  bread"  is  a 
condition  common  to  mankind :  the  few  who  in  comfort- 
able dependence  may  stand  aside  careless  of  the  work-a- 
day  world  do  not  alter  the  truth  that  for  most  of  the 
human  race  life  is  made  up  of  days  of  toil  and  hours  of 
weariness ;  for  the  many  the  struggle  for  food,  clothing 
and  shelter  is  the  issue  of  paramount  and  pressing  im- 
portance; it  drags  at  life's  larger  impulses,  hampers  and 
stifles  the  yearning  for  higher  things.  Those  who  work 
for  wages  that  allow  no  margin  of  ease  so  outnumber 
the  well-to-do  that  their  problems  are  significant  of 
the  constant  modifications  in  the  life  of  the  nation ; 
they  are  the  basis  of  its  economic  and  political 
structure  and  on  their  welfare  rests  its  permanency. 
Their  misfortunes  may  strike  at  the  root  of  social 
institutions ;  their  prosperity  will  be  reflected  in  the 
whole  political  organism ;  their  standards  will  permeate 

3 


4  THE    PATH    OF   LABOR 

the  ethical  life  of  the  nation.  Fifty  million  of  the 
people  in  the  United  States,  one-half  of  its  population, 
live  in  communities  of  less  than  2,500  inhabitants. 
Labor's  problem  is,  therefore,  not  a  sectional  one,  con- 
fined to  any  part  of  the  country,  but  is  the  problem  of  the 
city,  of  the  small  town,  of  the  rural  region. 

During  1916  and  1917  questions  relating  to  labor  have 
been  scarcely  second  in  public  interest  to  those  connected 
with  the  war,  for  the  problems  that  beset  those  who  strive 
in  the  economic  warfare  are  more  widespread  than  ever, 
while  at  the  same  time  labor's  unrest  becomes  of  ever 
keener  importance  to  the  country  as  a  whole.  The  over- 
whelming need  of  production,  the  necessity  for  adapta- 
tion of  service  to  new  accomplishment  would  of  them- 
selves emphasize  labor's  importance,  but  when  to  these 
is  added  a  general  dislocation  of  labor,  the  result  is  of 
bewildering  effect.  Then,  too,  the  path  of  labor  is  being 
trodden  by  feet  unaccustomed  to  its  roughness  and  its 
steeps  are  being  climbed  by  a  great  new  and  untried  army 
of  workers.  Economic  and  patriotic  pressure  alike  are 
drawing  into  the  industrial  group  many  whose  activities 
have  been  bounded  by  the  home,  or  who  have  rendered 
unremunerated  service.  As  the  Army  and  Navy  have 
been  recruited  from  among  all  the  people  of  the  country,  so 
labor  is  recruiting  itself  from  all  ranks  and  from  all  parts 
of  the  land,  and  the  readjustments  necessary  to  the  new 
economic  conditions  will  be  felt  in  isolated  communities 
and  among  secluded  peoples  who  may  fail  to  connect 
their  vexing  uncertainties  with  the  great  events  of  the 
national  life. 

But  the  working  through  of  time-long  plans  goes  on, 


THE  CALL    TO   SERVICE  5 

and  more  and  more  comes  the  realization  that  "the 
frustrations  of  circumstances  are  but  episodes"  that  must 
be  met  by  the  peoples  of  a  period  as  they  contribute  their 
share  to  world  making. 

Organized  Labor 

Unfortunately  the  word  "labor"  is  today  being  so  gen- 
erally translated  in  terms  of  organization  that  many  fail 
to  associate  problems  of  sweeping  scope,  presented  by 
great  bodies  of  workers,  with  the  daily  difficulties  of  small 
communities  or  isolated  individuals.  The  swift  current 
of  the  world's  great  movements,  however,  drives  back 
eddies  which  reach  into  remote  coves  and  bays  and  which 
engulf  many  who  are  ignorant  of  the  source  or  sweep  of 
the  irresistible  forces  at  work. 

Highly  organized  labor  has  a  strength  and  power  that 
scattered  and  unorganized  units  cannot  have,  but  in  this 
very  strength  lies  a  menace  to  labor  itself.  The  Ameri- 
can Federation  of  Labor  alone  reported  in  1917  a  mem- 
bership of  2,371,434.  The  official  co-operation  of  so 
large  a  group  is  decidedly  well  worth  the  winning,  and 
agencies  of  all  kinds  exert  pressure  to  assure  themselves 
of  the  sympathy  and  the  votes  of  a  body  that  is  repre- 
sentative of  labor  throughout  the  United  States.  The 
endorsement  of  the  Federation  carries  with  it  a  country- 
wide, although  unofficial,  propaganda  and  it  therefore 
attracts  the  most  active  effort  on  the  part  of  those 
desiring  endorsement.  For  example :  "The  liquor 
problem  is  being  considered  by  organized  labor  as  never 
before,  largely  because  of  the  industrial  situation  pro- 
duced by  the  war,  and  also  because  the  question  of  food 


6  THE    PATH    OF   LABOR 

supply  makes  the  liquor  problem  of  supreme  importance. 
For  some  time  the  liquor  men  have  been  trying  to  cap- 
ture the  labor  movement.  Already  quite  a  number  of 
State  central  labor  unions  have  voted  in  favor  of  the 
liquor  traffic  because  of  the  urgent  request  of  bartenders 
and  brewery  workers."  1  Great  numbers  of  the  members 
of  the  Federation  are  opposed  to  the  liquor  traffic,  and 
the  American  workingman  is  on  the  whole  sober,  yet  a 
sectional  question  involving  one  type  of  workers  can  be 
made  to  misrepresent  American  labor  and  to  seem  to 
secure  a  backing  for  a  great  agency  of  evil. 

Since  the  outbreak  of  the  Great  War  the  attitude  of 
organized  labor  has  been  the  subject  of  much  discussion, 
for  it  has  found  in  its  hands  the  power  to  so  clog  the  wheels 
of  industry  as  to  greatly  impede,  if  not  to  stop,  the  war. 
'They  form  the  army  behind  the  battle  line,"  and  when  a 
testing  time  comes,  no  one  need  doubt  that  labor  will 
meet  its  opportunity  finely  and  splendidly  with  that  devo- 
tion that  is  characteristic  of  American  manhood.  Among 
the  disturbing  rumors  and  discussions  of  the  day  it  may 
be  well  to  remember  the  fair  summing  up  of  the  case 
made  by  John  A.  Fitch,  who  forbids  that  organized 
labor  in  its  motives  be  differentiated  from  other  groups. 
He  says:  "Labor  is  patriotic,  but  its  patriotism  is  like 
that  of  nearly  everyone  else.  Most  of  us  are  patriotic  at 
heart,  but  we  seldom  are  willing  to  make  anything  less 
than  a  supreme  sacrifice  for  our  country.  It  doesn't 
seem  worth  while.  Short  of  that  we  go  about  our  busi- 
ness in  the  usual  way."  *  Organized  labor  alone  can  ex- 
press itself  concretely ;  it  vocalizes  the  ambitions  not  only 
of  its  own  group  but  of  labor  in  general,  and  those  out- 

1  The  Christian   Work.  November,  1917. 
*  The  Survey,  December.  1917. 


THE   CALL   TO   SERVICE  7 

side  of  its  ranks  share  in  the  results  of  its  efforts.  During 
1915-1917  the  demands  of  labor  increased  wages  greatly; 
this  increase  raised  the  cost  of  production;  the  increased 
cost  of  food,  clothing,  etc.,  led  to  new  requests  on  the 
part  of  labor.  In  the  summer  of  1917,  "The  Depart- 
ment of  Labor  at  Washington  estimated  that,  as  com- 
pared with  January,  1915,  the  average  daily  wages  per 
man  had  increased  38  per  cent,  in  the  cotton-manufac- 
turing industry  and  53  per  cent,  at  the  iron  and  steel 
mills.  These  industries  were  typical  in  this  respect  of 
many  others." ' 

We  are  yet  too  near  the  economic  uncertainties  of  1917 
to  have  the  perspective  for  a  final  word,  but  it  is  possible 
to  suggest  a  few  of  the  forces  that,  combining  with  the 
immense  demand  for  war  production,  are  magnifying  in 
the  national  life  the  place  and  attitude  of  labor. 

Immigration 

One  of  the  first  effects  of  the  war  felt  in  the  United 
States  was  the  cutting  down  of  the  number  of  immigrants 
arriving  at  her  ports.  The  warring  nations  of  Europe 
in  1914  and  1915  called  home  the  reservists  of  their 
armies,  and,  by  the  tens  of  thousands,  able-bodied  work- 
men laid  down  the  pick  and  shovel,  stopped  the  looms, 
drew  the  fires  and  answered  the  call  of  their  mother 
country.  In  1913  there  were  843,000  more  aliens 
admitted  to  this  country  than  departed;  in  1915  "the 
arrivals  of  European  aliens  in  this  country,  immigrant  and 
non-immigrant,  were  exactly  16,900  short  of  depar- 
tures";* in  the  year  ending  June  30,  1917,  the  official 

•  Scribner's  Magazine,  October,   1917. 
4  Scribner's  Magazine,  October,   1917. 


8  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

figures  show  a  total  of  aliens  admitted  of  362,877;  the 
net  gain  for  that  year  was,  however,  only  about  200,000. 

The  peoples  furnishing  the  largest  number  of  immi- 
grants for  1917,  in  numerical  precedence,  were: 

Italian   38,950 

English   32,246 

Greek  25,919 

French    24,405 

Scandinavian    19,596 

Irish     17,462 

Hebrew     17,342 

Mexican   16,438 

Spanish     15,019 

Scotch     13,350 

Portuguese    10.194 

Japanese   8,925 

African 7,971 

It  is  interesting  to  make  a  few  comparisons  with  1914 

as  follows : 

1914  1917 

Italian    296,414  38,950 

Hebrew    138,051  17,342 

Polish   122,657  3,109 

Russian    44,957  3,711 

Ruthenian   36,727  1,211 

Slovak    25,819  244 

Syrian    9,023  976 

Roumanian   24,070  522 

Magyar    44,538  434 

The  economic  life  of  this  country  has,  for  years,  been 
built  on  the  basis  of  a  large  and  ever-increasing  supply 
of  unskilled  labor ;  the  newer  immigrants  have  mined  the 
coal,  laid  the  railroads,  felled  the  forests,  built  the  sub- 
ways, tunneled  the  mountains ;  as  each  group  has  pushed 
its  way  to  a  larger  economic  independence,  its  work  has 
been  taken  over,  not  by  its  own  Americanized  sons,  but 


THE   CALL   TO   SERVICE  9 

by  a  group  of  more  lately  arrived  strangers  from  over  the 
sea.  Man  labor  has  seemed  inexhaustible  in  supply  and 
of  small  value.  Suddenly  all  this  has  changed ;  the 
source  of  supply  has  been  closed.  Southeastern  Europe 
needs  her  own  men,  and  industry  in  the  United  States 
finds  itself  facing  a  shortage  of  that  type  of  labor  which 
has  been  doing  the  fundamental  work  that  made  other 
labor  possible. 

Off  to  the  Front 

While  industry  was  trying  to  readjust  itself  to  the 
difficulties  caused  by  a  curtailed  immigration,  the  United 
States  entered  the  war,  and  approximately  a  million 
young  men  were  called  to  the  camps;  these  came  from 
every  form  of  labor;  the  farm,  the  shop,  the  mine,  trans- 
portation, offices,  colleges  shared  alike  in  the  embarrass- 
ment of  necessary  readjustments.  A  walk  about  the 
business  sections  of  any  city  or  large  town  where  service 
flags  are  displayed,  suggests  the  widespread  shiftings 
occasioned  by  the  calling  of  the  men  to  the  colors.  In 
some  cases  50%  of  the  employees  of  a  business  have 
been  taken.  In  readjusting  the  work  to  such  conditions 
those  remaining  who  have  had  some  experience  and  who 
show  adaptability  are  necessarily  pushed  upward  to  man 
the  more  important  positions,  thus  again  tending  to  em- 
phasize the  shortage  of  unskilled  labor. 

New  Industries 

Simultaneously  with  the  lessening  of  immigration  and 
the  formation  of  the  new  United  States  Army,  industry 
became  greatly  stimulated  and  especially  along  certain 


10  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

lines.  These  later  became  of  paramount  importance  and 
it  became  of  immediate  necessity  that  labor  should  be 
recruited  for  their  equipment.  Huge  munition  and  gun 
plants  sprang  into  existence  as  though  by  magic  and 
demanded  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  of  workers, 
skilled  and  unskilled ;  the  need  of  clothing  and  equipment 
for  a  million  men  stimulated  factories  to  the  nth  degree 
of  production  ;  food  supplies,  not  only  for  this  country  but 
for  its  allies  in  Europe,  called  for  increased  agricultural 
forces;  lumber  for  great  cantonments  and  for  a  fleet  of 
wooden  vessels  sent  new  forces  to  the  forests — every- 
where an  inordinate  activity  has  resulted.  But  labor  is 
needed  not  only  for  these  new,  or  freshly  stimulated  lines 
of  work ;  they  in  turn  must  be  supplied  with  raw  material, 
and  there  has  resulted  a  great  chain  of  awakened  indus- 
tries; food  must  not  only  be  produced,  it  must  be  con- 
served ;  factories  call  for  metals  and  for  coal,  and  mining 
becomes  a  vital  part  of  the  whole  process ;  cotton  and 
wool  pass  into  the  insatiable  maw  of  looms  and  the  work 
of  the  farm  increases;  yet  the  demand  is  ever  for  "more, 
more."  The  raw  material  must  reach  the  factory  or 
workshop ;  the  finished  product  must  go  to  the  consumer ; 
transportation,  by  land  and  sea,  requires  large  groups  of 
workers.  Directly  and  indirectly  an  uncounted  multitude 
must  serve  if  the  needed  supplies  shall  reach  those  who 
have  taken  on  themselves  the  grim  responsibility  of 
soldierhood. 

No  large  group  of  unemployed  existed  in  the  country 
in  1914;  the  withdrawal  of  those  who  returned  to  Europe 
and  of  those  who  have  gone  to  form  the  National  Army 
brought  about  an  acute  labor  situation.     The  usual  activ- 


THE   CALL   TO   SERVICE  11 

ities  could  not  continue  and  the  new  ones  be  supplied 
with  workers ;  there  became  necessary  the  transference  of 
labor  from  the  less  necessary  forms  of  production  and  its 
replacement  in  new  groups.  Such  a  change  must  come — 
in  many  instances  plants  will  be  altered  to  meet  the  new 
needs  arising  daily  because  of  the  war,  and  labor  thus 
remain  fixed  in  location  while  producing  essential  rather 
than  non-essential  articles ;  in  other  cases  there  will  be 
necessary  the  diversion  of  labor  geographically  as  well 
as  industrially.  "There  is  no  reason  for  a  decrease  in 
the  total  value  of  goods  manufactured,  but  they  must  be 
products  having  a  direct  or  indirect  relation  to  the  present 
necessities  of  the  nation."  '  The  result  has  been  a  serious 
dislocation  of  labor;  the  shif tings  and  realignments  have 
caused  general  confusion,  bringing  new  social  as  well  as 
economic  problems. 

But  shifting  of  labor  has  not  been  enough  to  meet  the 
new  situation — an  added  supply  of  labor  has  become 
necessary  if  the  wheels  of  industry  are  to  turn. 

Substitutes 

We  are  apt  to  feel  that  the  entrance  of  women  into 
gainful  employment  is  a  new  factor  brought  about  by 
Nineteenth  and  Twentieth  Century  conditions.  Women 
have,  however,  always  been  a  part,  and  an  important 
part,  of  the  industrial  system  of  this  country.  They  not 
only  have  not  been  "doing  men's  work"  or  "driving  men 
out,"  but  have  been  urged  and  pressed  into  this  service. 
As  colonial  records  show,  the  colonist  fathers,  economists 
and  political  leaders,  believed  it  better  for  women  to  be 
employed  in  factories  than  to  live  in  even  comparative 

'New  York  Times,  December,   1917. 


12  THE   PATH    OF  LABOR 

idleness,  and  their  pressure,  as  well  as  that  of  necessity, 
began  a  system  that  has  grown  and  developed  with  the 
years. 

"In  1794  when  Trench  Coxe  found  it  necessary  to  reply 
to  the  argument  that  labor  was  so  dear  as  to  make  it 
impossible  for  us  to  succeed  as  a  manufacturing  nation 
and  that  the  pursuit  of  agriculture  should  occupy  all  our 
citizens,  he  at  once  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  the 
importance  of  women's  labor  must  not  be  overlooked, 
since  manufactures  furnished  the  most  profitable  field  for 
its  employment.  And  in  the  early  part  of  the  last  century, 
a  new  factory  was  called  a  blessing  to  the  community 
among  other  reasons,  because  it  would  furnish  employ- 
ment for  the  women  of  the  neighborhood.  Later  it  was 
said  that  women  were  kept  out  of  vice  simply  by  being 
employed,  and,  instead  of  being  destitute,  provided  with 
an  abundance  for  a  comfortable  subsistence."6 

From  colonial  days  to  the  present  there  has  been  a 
steady  growth  both  in  the  numbers  of  women  employed 
and  in  the  list  of  occupations  open  to  them.  This  in- 
crease, before  the  present  war  "has  been  only  normal, 
considering  the  rate  of  increase  in  population,  in  the 
group  of  industrial  occupations  designated  in  the  census 
as  manufacturing  and  mechanical  pursuits,  while  there 
has  been  a  disproportionately  large  increase  only  in  the 
occupational  group  trade  and  transportation." 

The  statistics  of  women  who  in  1910  were  employed  in 
gainful  occupations  is  of  interest,  especially  as  showing  a 
generally  unguessed  distribution  in  the  various  forms  of 
labor.  The  census  of  that  year  showed  8,075,772  women 
employed,  as  follows: 

"  Women  in  Industry,  Abbott. 


THE   CALL   TO   SERVICE  13 

Domestic   service 2,530,846 

Manufacturing,    etc 1,820,980 

Agriculture,  animals,  etc 1,807,501 

Professional    733,885 

Clerical    593,224 

Trade   468,088 

Unclassified    121,248 

The  group  that  has  principally  attracted  legislative  at- 
tention is  the  second — manufacturing.  This  is  because 
those  thus  employed  work  in  groups,  and  thus  become 
officially  articulate,  and  also  because  they  compete  to  some 
extent  at  least  with  men,  both  organized  and  unorganized. 
The  first  and  third  groups,  while  numerically  rivaling  the 
second,  are  made  up  of  those  whose  work  is  more  indi- 
vidualistic. The  workers  in  these  groups  do  not,  in  their 
capacity  as  workers,  mingle  with  large  groups  similarly 
employed,  and  their  relations  to  their  employers  have 
remained  of  a  much  more  personal  character  thin  is  the 
case  in  the  factory. 

The  influences  causing  readjustment  in  man  labor  will 
of  necessity  bring  about  changes  in  the  woman  group. 
The  demands  of  the  war  will  more  and  more  curtail  the 
production  of  luxuries  and  cause  the  concentration  of 
labor  on  things  vital  to  present  conditions.  In  the  manu- 
facturing group  this  fact  will  bring  many  shiftings;  but 
as  large  numbers  of  men  will  be  withdrawn  from  this 
group,  the  women  remaining  therein  will  be  subjected 
to  a  disproportionate  amount  of  readjusting.  Even  then, 
however,  it  is  probable  that  there  will  not  be  found  with- 
in the  group  enough  workers  to  supply  the  demand. 
This  will  probably  be  equally  true  of  group  3.  "Agri- 
culture, Animals,  etc.,"  because  of  the  food  demands. 
The  present  tendency  would  indicate  that  group  1,  "Do- 


14  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

mestic  Service,"  will  lose  large  numbers  who  will  go 
to  fill  the  vacancies  in  groups  2  and  3.  An  interesting 
by-product  of  the  war  is  thus  suggested,  as  much  shift- 
ing in  this  direction  would  necessitate  vital  changes  in 
the  customs  and  manners  of  social  life.  Personal  com- 
fort and  desire  will,  however,  give  way  before  national 
need,  and  American  womanhood,  whether  served  or 
serving,  will  cheerfully  readjust  itself  to  changed  con- 
ditions. 

But  there  will  come — is  coming  as  we  write — not  only 
regroupings  among  those  already  employed  in  gainful 
occupations,  but  an  entrance  into  the  field  of  profitable 
employment  by  large  groups  of  women  who  have  here- 
tofore remained  outside  the  ranks  of  labor,  many  being 
of  those  who  have  served  in  volunteer  work.  European 
countries  have  had  to  call  on  their  women  to  aid  largely 
in  work  specifically  allied  to  the  war,  and  to  share  in 
service  outside  of  the  homes.  There  is,  perhaps,  to  be 
no  more  interesting  by-product  of  the  Great  War  than 
this  larger  entrance  of  women  into  industry  and  all  that 
it  may  presage  of  social  and  economic  change. 

In  England  there  are  today  about  1,256,000  women 
who  have  taken  work  formerly  done  almost  wholly  by 
men,  raising  their  employment  total  from  about  3,282,- 
000  to  4,538.000.  This  total  employment  does  not  in- 
clude domestic  servants,  women  in  small  shops  or  on 
farms,  or  nurses  in  military,  naval  or  Red  Cross  hospi- 
tals. Over  200,000  are  now  engaged  in  agricultural  labor. 
Still  more  are  employed  in  the  great  war-time  industry 
of  munitions-making.  How  vast  that  industry  has  be- 
come is  indicated  by  the  fact  that  the  Ministry  of  Muni- 


THE   CALL   TO   SERVICE  15 

tions  is  now  employing  2,000,000  persons  and  is  spend- 
ing nearly  $3,500,000,000  a  year. 

The  same  process  of  substitution  of  female  for  male 
labor  has  naturally  obtained  in  Germany,  while  France, 
also,  now  depends  largely  upon  her  women  in  the  fac- 
tories, as  well  as  on  the  farms. 

These  women  will  go  in  large  numbers  into  kinds  of 
work  that  have  heretofore  been  mainly  in  the  hands  of 
men.  As  we  go  to  press,  a  few  women  street  car  con- 
ductors and  taxi  drivers  are  taking  the  places  of  men; 
some  cities  are  trying  women  as  postmen ;  elevator  boys 
are  being  replaced  by  girls ;  railroad  yards  are  rinding 
women  satisfactory  as  workers,  while  factories  of  all 
kinds  are  utilizing  ever  larger  groups  of  women.  There 
seems  at  this  time  no  line  of  employment  that  per  se  is 
closed  to  women  because  of  sex,  and  the  possibilities  of 
another  twelve  months  are  beyond  prophecy. 

This  situation  is  not  peculiar  to  any  one  part  of  the 
country;  the  stress  of  national  life  is  drawing  the  people 
of  all  parts  and  those  of  all  races  into  the  maelstrom. 
The  ever-widening  circles  of  demand  are  reaching  into 
the  retired  village,  into  the  mountains  and  the  valleys ; 
all  of  life  is  being  stirred  by  the  new  national  conscious- 
ness that  is  springing  from  a  common  danger  and  a 
common  aim.  The  South,  that  fifty  years  ago  was 
forced  to  adjust  itself  after  an  upheaval  of  the  foun- 
dations of  its  social  and  economic  life,  is  again  face  to 
face  with  a  need  of  readjustment.  Negro  labor,  feeling 
the  present  unrest,  is  moving  in  great  groups  to  the 
North  and  West ;  New  England  is  feeling  the  cutting  off 
of  immigrant  labor  and  is  calling  women  to  man  its  fac- 


16  THE    PATH    OF   LABOR 

tories;  the  West  finds  its  labor  seized  with  a  new  rest- 
lessness and  looks  forward  with  uncertainty.  The  Gov- 
ernment sends  out  over  the  country  its  call  for  10,000 
trained  women  for  service  in  the  departments — every- 
where are  stirrings,  shif tings,  readjustments. 

Spiritual  Influences 

In  all  of  this  there  is  a  wide  and  an  interesting  field 
for  economic  discussion ;  we  are,  however,  especially 
concerned  with  that  phase  as  it  relates  to  the  moral  and 
spiritual  life  of  the  workers.  From  the  marvelous  shift- 
ings  and  realignments  of  the  time  there  must  evolve  new 
spiritual  values  as  well  as  new  social  and  economic  sit- 
uations. The  church  of  Christ  cannot  stand  aside  from 
a  situation  of  such  grave  importance.  Its  relationship 
to  individuals  in  the  great  groups  affected  insures  an 
abiding  interest  in  the  perplexities  that  beset  those  indi- 
viduals in  their  work-a-day  lives,  as  well  as  in  the  final 
solution  that  may  evolute  from  the  turmoil  of  the  day. 

Christian  women  may  well  study  deeply  and  think 
carefully  of  the  changing  lives  of  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  workers,  many  of  whom  are  women,  and  those  mostly 
young  women.  Many  of  these  are  bewildered  and  dis- 
tressed by  the  enforced  absence  in  the  army  or  navy  of 
the  breadwinner,  by  a  new  necessity  of  self-support,  or 
because  this  support  must  be  gained  under  new  condi- 
tions ;  others  are  excited  and  exhilarated  by  the  break  in 
the  routine  of  life.  Both  groups  are  uncertain,  tenta- 
tive: they  are  in  an  impressionable  and  therefore  pre- 
carious attitude.  The  very  natural  reaction  to  new  en- 
vironments and  new  conditions  will  be  that  they  shall 


THE   CALL   TO    SERVICE  17 

free  themselves  from  the  past,  and  that  they  shall  make 
for  themselves  lives  unhampered  by  customary  re- 
straints, and  therefore  they  need  to  receive  a  message 
which  will  make  clear  to  them  the  seeming  chaos  of  the 
present-day  world. 

One  industry  alone  may  illustrate  the  new  situation : 
munition  works  have  been  built  in  communities  where 
existed  only  a  small  margin  of  extra  labor;  to  supply 
workers  for  these  plants  operatives  have  been  drawn 
from  a  wide  circle  of  towns ;  in  most  cases  no  provision 
for  housing  or  caring  for  these  new  workers  was  pro- 
vided before  they  appeared — the  result  has  been  difficult 
for  the  men ;  for  the  girls  there  has  been  a  situation 
fraught  with  real  danger.  The  Y.  W.  C.  A.,  by  a  few 
experimental  boarding  houses  and  recreational  centers, 
has  shown  the  need  and  possibilities  of  caring  for  these 
groups  of  unassimilated  workers  who  may  be  drawn  into 
a  community,  but  neither  the  Association  nor  any  or- 
ganization can  meet  all  the  needs.  Christian  people  who 
live  adjacent  to  such  problems  must  study  them  and  find 
the  solutions  therefor. 

A  virile  Home  Missions  may  well  concern  itself  with 
the  problems  of  labor;  it  has  ever  been  its  responsibility 
to  search  out  the  lonely  or  the  neglected,  to  minister  to 
those  whose  way  is  difficult,  and  to  those  who  are  facing 
new  and  untried  conditions.  Home  Missions  has  also 
an  ever-widening  conception  of  the  scope  of  its  service 
in  a  new  cooperation  with  the  economic  and  social  life 
of  men,  with  their  physical  as  well  as  their  spiritual 
well-being.  It  preaches  a  gospel  that  presages  a  broader 
and  truer  interpretation  of  the  brotherhood  of  man.  There 


18  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

is  no  greater  service  for  Home  Missions  than  that  it  shall 
interpret  the  Fatherhood  of  God  to  those  whose  feet 
often  stumble  as  they  pass  on  the  path  of  labor. 

A  Call  to  Church  Women 

In  January,  1917,  the  Council  of  Women  of  Home 
Missions,  composed  of  the  representatives  of  sixteen 
Woman's  Boards  of  Home  Missions,  feeling  keenly  the 
alienations  that  were  recognized,  placed  itself  upon  rec- 
ord in  the  following  statement : 

"The  Council  of  Women  for  Home  Missions  wishes  to 
bring  to  the  attention  of  its  Constituent  and  Corresponding 
Boards  the  urgent  and  increasing  need  of  a  more  intelligent 
and  sympathetic  understanding  between  the  women  of  the 
church  and  the  women  in  industry.  It  is  happily  true  that 
many  women  in  industry  are  at  the  same  time  women  of 
the  church  and  that  many  of  the  women  who  are  members 
of  the  church  are  already  deeply  interested  in  the  social 
and  economic  problems  which  especially  affect  women ;  but 
we  must  admit  with  heartfelt  sorrow  that  a  division  into 
classes  along  this  line  exists  among  the  women  of  our 
country  and  that  it  is  difficult  to  bridge  the  gulf  that  separates 
them,  since  there  is  good  reason  to  fear  the  women  in 
industry  believe  that  a  lack  of  comprehension  of  their 
problems  and  a  failure  to  co-operate  in  solving  them  mark 
the  attitude  of  the  women  of  the  churches. 

"The  Council  of  Women  for  Home  Missions  believes  that 
the  time  has  come  when  our  Women's  Home  Mission  Boards 
should  take  some  part  in  meeting  this  situation.  We  remem- 
ber that  the  Boards  are  organized  to  do  a  specific  work  and 
that  these  conditions  and  questions  appear  to  lie  outside  the 
boundaries  of  that  work.  Yet  in  the  broadest  and  most 
Christlike  aspect  of  the  work  nothing  that  concerns  the 
womanhood  of  our  country  can  be  looked  upon  as  alien  to 
it,  nor  can  the  Boards  be  indifferent  to  the  social  and  eco- 
nomic welfare  of  these  multitudes  of  women  who  should 
be,  but  who  are  not,  one  with  the  missionary  women  of  the 
churches  in  the  bonds  of  a  common  belief  and  in  the  service 
of  a  common  Savior  and  Lord. 


THE   CALL    TO   SERVICE  19 

"The  Council,  therefore,  desires  to  recommend  most 
earnestly  that  each  Board  seek  to  find  some  way  which  shall 
be  consonant  with  its  policy  by  which  the  women  of  its 
churches  may  be  led  to  acquaint  themselves  with  the  ques- 
tions which  are  of  vital  importance  to  the  women  in  industry, 
and  to  enter  sympathetically  into  their  effort  to  solve  them. 

"There  must  be  women  in  every  church  or  in  every  organ- 
ized group  of  churches  who  could  and  would  respond  to  this 
need  and  this  opportunity  without  lessening  in  any  degree 
their  response  to  the  specific  needs  of  their  denominational 
work.  The  need  is  not  for  a  new  department  of  work  nor, 
indeed,  for  the  putting  of  a  new  burden  upon  the  shoulders 
of  those  who  are  already  overburdened,  but  the  need  is  rather 
for  a  call  to  the  women  of  the  churches  to  reach  out  more 
intelligently  and  more  sympathetically  to  their  sisters  in 
the  working  world." 

It  would  seem  that  this  statement  was  prophetic  of  the 
vital  condition  that  has  so  soon  come,  when  all  the  prob- 
lems of  labor  have  been  intensified  and  the  problems  of 
the  women  in  industry  multiplied.  If  these  problems 
were  a  challenge  to  the  women  of  the  churches  in  1916, 
surely  in  1918  that  challenge  has  become  imperative  in 
time  and  force. 

Christian  women  must  help  many  to  readjust  themselves 
to  new  conditions,  must  help  them  to  find  in  the  new  life 
that  power  that  shall  keep  them  true  to  the  best  ideals  of 
American  womanhood,  must  help  to  build  out  of  change 
and  turmoil  a  fine  and  Christian  citizenry.  The  future 
of  the  race  as  well  as  its  present  emergencies  will  need 
to  be  guarded;  an  educational  program  that  shall  teach 
to  adult  as  well  as  child  a  real  Americanization  develop- 
ment, that  will  make  and  keep  the  nation  intact,  must 
be  presented ;  the  church  as  the  material  embodiment  of 
the  spirit  of  love  and  faith  must  offer  its  help  to  all. 
All  this  then  should  be  the  approach  of  Christian  women 


20  THE    PATH    OF   LABOR 

to  a  study  of  the  path  of  labor  with  its  difficulties  and  its 
needs. 

Alienation  From  the  Church 

That  an  overwhelming  number  of  those  who  follow 
the  path  of  labor  are  alienated  from,  or  at  best,  careless 
of  the  church  as  an  organized  body  cannot  be  denied. 
In  large  cities  the  Protestant  church  has  shown  a 
marked  tendency  to  withdraw  from  those  districts  where 
live  those  who  work  with  their  hands  and  to  concentrate 
among  the  numerically  limited  well  to  do.  The  reasons 
given  for  this  withdrawal  are  that  a  lack  of  attendance 
makes  the  church  unnecessary  and  makes  its  financial 
support  impossible.  A  few  missions,  of  varying  degrees 
of  popularity,  reach  a  limited  number,  but  leave  abso- 
lutely untouched  the  great  groups  of  workmen  and  their 
families — American  or  foreign.  In  the  smaller  towns 
the  same  tendency  is  marked,  accentuated  by  the  absence 
of  "missions,"  and  by  the  occasional  presence  of  success- 
ful and  aggressive  churches  that  stand  out  as  proof  of  the 
existence  of  a  generally  neglected  power.  In  rural  com- 
munities, where  thirty  years  ago  were  prosperous  Prot- 
estant churches,  and  where  the  present  inhabitants  are, 
to  a  large  extent,  the  children  of  those  who  attended  and 
supported  these  churches,  there  may  be  found  today 
Country  Life  Departments  of  Church  Boards  earnestly 
engaged  in  revivifying  somnolent  groups.  Says  one 
student  of  this  question :  "After  an  exhaustive  study 
of  a  number  of  selected  representative  fields  in  different 
parts  of  the  United  States,  Strong  (Dr.  Josiah)  con- 
cludes that  less  than  30  per  cent,  of  the  population  of 


THE    CALL    TO    SERVICE  21 

America  are  regular  attendants,  perhaps  20  per  cent,  are 
irregular  attendants,  while  fully  one-half  never  attend 
any  church  at  all,  Protestant  or  Catholic.  This  per- 
centage of  attendance  seems  too  high.  Investigations  made 
by  the  writer  in  New  England  towns,  and  by  a  friend  in  a 
large  part  of  Boston,  would  not  warrant  an  estimate  of 
even  15  per  cent,  of  the  population  as  regular  attendants. 

Statistics  also  show  that  church  membership  is 

steadily  declining  in  proportion  to  population."  T 

Such  figures  prove  conclusively  that  the  great  work  to 
be  done  by  the  church  among  the  large  groups  of  people 
affected  by  the  present  labor  difficulties,  must  be  done 
largely  with  those  who  have  lived  apart  from  the  church, 
careless  of  their  own  needs  or  of  the  help  that  church 
could  give.  To  these  groups  the  church  has  at  this  time 
a  definite  ministry — in  welcoming  them  into  the  commu- 
nities to  which  economic  need  may  take  them,  in  attach- 
ing them  to  the  local  church  body,  in  heartening  them  for 
their  tasks,  in  showing  to  them  that  "No  nation  is  safe 
without  Jesus.  The  America  of  the  future,  like  America 
of  the  past,  must  be  a  spiritual  reality,  or  we  are  doomed." 

Causes 

There  are  doubtless  many  reasons,  springing  from  in- 
numerable sources,  for  the  lack  of  church  attendance — 
some  due  to  indifference,  some  to  positive  antagonism, 
but  the  one  great  general  cause,  it  is  certain,  is  that  for 
multitudes  of  people  attention  is  concentrated  on  the 
problems  of  physical  existence ;  the  rapid  increase  of 
material  things  to  the  few  raises  hope  in  the  minds  of 
many  that  they,  too,  may  be  among  those  who  will  share 

*  The  Church  and  the  Wage-Earners,  Thompson. 


22  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

largely  in  the  wealth  of  the  country.  This  hope  directs 
thought  and  energy  into  the  channel  of  commercialism. 
Whatever  tends  to  bring  about  the  realization  of  the 
hope  is  keenly  sought  to  the  exclusion  of  other  things 
which  seem  of  less  immediate  importance.  This  position 
is  emphasized  by  the  great  increase  of  secular  literature 
in  the  form  of  newspapers  and  cheap  magazines,  which 
provide  a  reading  supply  that  directs  the  attention  still 
further  toward  material  things  and  away  from  the  con- 
templation of  matters  relating  to  the  spirit.  Travel  in- 
creases and  Sunday  travel  especially.  Church  attend- 
ance suffers  thereby,  and  more  and  more  the  Church 
seems  a  thing  apart  from  the  problem  of  life. 

While  a  few  are  actively  antagonistic  to  the  church 
for  one  reason  or  another — a  few  because  of  persecu- 
tion suffered  in  other  lands,  the  great  mass  of  non- 
church  goers  are  frankly  indifferent,  if  that  can  be  called 
indifference  which  is  without  thought,  i.  e.,  the  church 
does  not  appear  on  their  horizon  except  as  the  agency 
of  marriage  and  death — they  ignore  it  because  they  never 
think  of  it.  The  writer  met  at  a  large  hotel  in  a  promi- 
nent Southern  resort,  a  cultured  woman  of  over  thirty 
years  of  age  who  had  lived  her  life  in  a  fine  Northern 
city,  but  who  frankly  said  that  she  had  never  attended  a 
church  service  in  her  whole  life — had  never  been  sent  to 
Sunday-school,  and  never  gave  the  matter  a  thought. 
This  seems  incredible,  yet  is  perhaps  not  so  exceptional 
as  we  would  like  to  think. 

A  Program  of  Service 

To  command  the  attention  of  the  great  throng  that  is 


THE   CALL   TO   SERVICE  23 

apart  from  the  church,  that  body  must  present  an  aggres- 
sive program  of  service;  it  must  preach  a  gospel  of  jus- 
tice, of  brotherliness,  of  love;  it  must  translate  its  preach- 
ing into  daily  practice  in  large  things  and  in  small ;  it 
must  concern  itself  with  this  world's  relationships  as  well 
as  with  those  of  a  future  life;  with  clearness  and  direct- 
ness it  must  convince  all  that  "man  cannot  live  by  bread 
alone." 


V 


II 

IN  CITY  INDUSTRIES 
GRACE  SCRIBNER 


If  ye  fulfill  the  royal  law  according  to  the  scripture,  Thou  shalt 
love  thy  neighbor  as  thy  self,  ye  do  weli. — Jas.  2:8. 

Bear  ye  one  another's  burdens  and  so  fulfill  the  law  of  Christ. — 
Gal.  6 : 2. 

We  then  that  are  strong  ought  to  bear  the  infirmities  of  the 
weak  and  not  to  please  ourselves. — Rom.  15 : 1. 

Suffer  little  children  to  come  unto  me,  and  forbid  them  not, 
for  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  God. — Luke  18:16. 

And  the  streets  of  the  city  shall  be  full  of  boys  and  girls 
playing  in  the  streets  thereof. — Ezek.  8 :  5. 

"Where  cross  the  crowded  ways  of  life, 
Where  sound  the  cries  of  race  and  clan, 
Above  the  noise  of  selfish  strife, 
We  hear  Thy  voice,  O  Son  of  man! 

"O  Master,  from  the  mountain  side, 

Make  haste  to  heal  these  hearts  of  pain, 
Among  the  restless  throngs  abide, 
O  tread  the  city's  streets  again, 

"  'Till  sons  of  men  shall  know  Thy  love, 
And  follow  where  Thy  feet  have  trod; 
Till  glorious  from  Thy  heaven  above 
Shall  come  the  city  of  our  God." 


II 

IN  CITY  INDUSTRIES 

The  Children 

On  the  streets  of  my  city  4,500  children  under  sixteen 
years  old,  and  as  young  as  twelve,  toil  long  hours.  We 
pass  them,  my  fellow  citizens  and  I,  on  every  down-town 
street  corner,  in  all  kinds  of  weather,  quite  oblivious  of 
the  incongruity  of  young  children  working  under  such 
conditions  on  the  streets  of  a  Christian  city.  Occasion- 
ally a  mis-shapen  young  body,  bending  under  the  weight 
of  a  stack  of  the  Sunday  edition,  or  a  shivering  urchin, 
blue  with  the  cold  and  wet,  may  rouse  a  passing  indigna- 
tion. But  for  the  most  part,  this  young  toiler  is  taken 
for  granted;  the  sympathy  of  a  hurrying  populace  is  re- 
served for  the  unseen  child  in  the  mill  or  factory. 

Among  those  forty-five  hundred  children  are  news- 
boys, bootblacks,  and  street  venders.  Often  thinly-clad 
in  the  coldest  weather,  exposed  to  the  fickle  chance  of  the 
skies  and  the  jostling  crowds,  working  long  and  irregular 
hours,  they  are  allowed  by  a  careless  community  to  barter 
their  health  and  future  vitality  for  a  miserable  and  un- 
certain pittance.  Not  only  is  their  health  undermined  by 
exposure,   night     work,    irregular   eating   and    sleeping 

21 


28  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

hours,  but  the  moral  environment  is  destructive  of  all 
that  the  nation  values  in  its  manhood.  There  is  every 
encouragement  to  dishonesty  and  evasion  of  the  demand 
of  school  authorities;  saloons  and  other  vicious  places 
swing  wide  open;  the  vices  of  the  street,  smoking,  drink- 
ing and  petty  gambling  are  all  forced  upon  these  children 
as  a  natural  part  of  their  education.  Once  out  from 
under  the  restrictions  of  family  control,  the  lure  of  the 
street  grows  more  and  more  irresistible.  Independence 
of  parental  authority  grows  into  defiance  not  only  of 
family,  but  often  of  community.  Regular  employment 
becomes  impossible  after  the  small  excitements  of  the 
street.  The  shrewd  lad,  so  sharp-witted  upon  the  street, 
is  sleepy  and  stupid  in  the  school-room,  after  the  long 
hours,  night  and  morning,  at  his  work.  A  comparison  of 
295  newsboys  with  boys  of  the  same  class  who  were  not 
working  revealed  that  the  newsboys  were  below  the  ave- 
rage, both  in  proficiency  and  in  school  work. 

A  description  of  the  conditions  in  newspaper  mailing- 
rooms  reads  like  a  tale  from  the  early  factory  conditions 
in  England: 

"Hundreds  of  boys  are  herded  together  in  badly-ven- 
tilated rooms  for  hours  at  a  time.  The  treatment  of 
these  boys  during  the  time  when  the  copies,  hot  from  the 
press,  are  being  distributed  needs  to  be  humanized.  The 
boys  fight  for  copies  as  though  it  were  a  matter  of  life 
and  death.  I  have  seen  them  climb  over  one  another's 
backs  in  their  efforts  to  get  nearest  the  distributing 
counter,  the  boys  underneath  bearing  the  load  rather 
than  yielding  the  place.  The  attendant  in  charge  often 
uses  a  stick  most  freely." 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  29 

But  this  is  not  the  London  of  Charles  Dickens,  nor  the 
Paris  of  Victor  Hugo.  It  is  Boston  in  1915.  Such  are 
the  general  conditions,  and  Boston  is  rather  careful,  as 
cities  go,  of  the  newsboys,  bootblacks  and  venders  who 
work  upon  its  streets. 

Besides  the  newsboys  there  are  upon  the  streets  of 
every  city  the  messenger  and  delivery  boys.  They  con- 
front the  same  dangers  from  exposure  and  overwork ;  the 
same  temptations  to  dishonesty  and  delinquency ;  and  in 
addition  have  forced  upon  them  the  moral  dangers  which 
even  maturity  ought  not  to  be  called  upon  to  face.  At 
the  most  impressionable  age,  these  young  boys  are  sent 
to  take  messages,  carry  parcels  and  run  errands  for  every 
type  of  evil  place  in  the  city's  vilest  underworld.  Saloons, 
houses  of  prostitution  and  gambling  dens  are  not  only 
open  and  beckoning,  but  require  the  services  of  these 
boys  in  the  regular  course  of  their  daily  work.  An  in- 
vestigation of  night  messenger  service  in  the  five  years 
previous  to  1915,  in  cities  representing  every  section  of 
the  country,  failed  to  reveal  a  single  night  messenger 
whose  work  had  not  brought  him  into  contact  with  vice. 
In  the  words  of  a  prominent  government  executive,  "The 
newsboy  service  is  demoralizing,  but  the  messenger  ser- 
vice is  debauching.  It  ruins  children  by  the  dozens,  and 
if  any  boy  comes  out  of  this  service  without  having  suf- 
fered moral  shipwreck,  he  can  thank  the  mercy  of  God 
and  not  the  protecting  arm  of  the  community  that  stands 
idly  by  and  makes  no  attempt  to  save  him  from  tempta- 
tion." His  verdict  is  confirmed  by  a  report  of  the  United 
States  Department  of  Labor,  which  found  that  among 
nearly  five  thousand  cases  of  juvenile  delinquency  re- 


30  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

ported  among  working  children,  54  per  cent,  were  among 
the  street  workers  alone.  The  conclusion  of  the  report 
is  "Street  work  is  a  prime  agency  for  the  promotion  of 
juvenile  delinquency;  and  this  becomes  more  impressive 
when  we  reflect  that  forms  of  street  work  are  few,  while 
the  variety  of  inside  employment  is  almost  without  end. 
There  can  be  no  question  about  the  relation  of  street 
work  to  juvenile  delinquency."  Some  pages  of  the 
Chicago  Vice  Commission  Report  are  still  burned  into 
the  consciences  of  those  who  are  fighting  the  children's 
battle.  So  terrible  were  the  revelations  concerning  these 
"Night  Children,"  as  they  were  called,  that  they  will  not 
bear  repeating  here ;  but  they  cannot  be  forgotten  until 
the  conditions  which  they  describe  have  been  banished 
forever. 

Deplorable  as  are  the  conditions  surrounding  the  chil- 
dren who  trade  upon  the  street,  these  children  do  have 
the  rudimentary  beginnings  of  state  and  municipal  pro- 
tection. There  remain  scores  of  little  workers  whom  no 
law  or  city  ordinance  can  touch — unprotected  by  any 
sort  of  regulation.  These  are  the  wood-pickers,  the 
baggage-carriers,  the  boys  and  girls  engaged  in  filthy 
scavenger  work,  gathering  wood  from  destroyed  build- 
ings, coal  from  the  freight  yards,  decayed  fruits  and 
vegetables  from  markets,  and  picking  over  the  city  dumps 
for  rubbish  which  may  be  sold  for  a  few  pennies. 

No  adequate  inquiry  has  ever  been  made  concerning 
the  number  of  children  who  are  toiling  in  one  or  another 
of  these  ways  upon  the  streets  of  this  great  and  wealthy 
country.    One  writer  conservatively  estimates  the  appal- 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  31 

ling  total  of  three  hundred  thousand,  not  counting  those 
who  do  not  come  under  some  sort  of  regulation. 

In  Mills,  Factories,  Canneries,  Workshops 

Heretofore  the  children  in  the  manufacturing  estab- 
lishments have  been  chiefly  in  the  public  eye.  There  the 
evils  were  most  obvious  and  most  readily  grasped.  Now, 
after  many  years  of  determined  effort,  and  many  rebuffs 
and  disappointments,  the  friends  of  these  children  have 
secured  a  Federal  law  which  prohibits  their  employment 
under  sixteen  years  of  age  in  mines  and  quarries  and 
under  fourteen  in  manufacturing  establishments,  and 
which  does  not  allow  any  of  these  to  work  more  than 
eight  hours  a  day,  nor  at  night.  Assuming,  however, 
that  this  law  will  be  adequately  enforced,  and  that  is  a 
large  assumption,  it  reaches  only  150,000  children.  The 
incredible  total  of  1,850,000  is  still  outside  its  protec- 
tion. 

This  means  that  all  the  evils  of  the  old  conditions  are 
still  to  be  borne,  even  in  some  of  the  most  advanced 
states,  by  children  as  young  as  fourteen.  How  many 
children  between  fourteen  and  sixteen  are  in  the  fac- 
tories, and  under  what  conditions  they  work,  we  do  not 
know.  But  we  can  get  faint  glimpses  from  scattered  re- 
ports. In  Massachusetts,  for  example,  there  were  last 
year  42,000  of  that  age  in  the  manufacturing  industries 
of  the  state.  In  the  cotton  mills  of  the  South  there  were, 
some  years  ago,  according  to  a  government  estimate,  14,- 
000  of  that  age  at  work,  and  in  the  New  England  mills 
nearly  10,500.  These  numbers  have  unquestionably  been 
greatly  increased  since  that  time. 


32  THE  PATH    OF   LABOR 

The  physical  effects  of  such  work  upon  boys  and  girls 
are  abundantly  evident.  In  the  textile  mills  of  New 
England  young  girls  operate  as  many  as  eight  looms  at 
a  time,  when  to  operate  more  than  two  is  to  disregard 
life  and  health.  In  the  cotton  mills,  whether  in  the 
North  or  in  the  South,  the  same  menaces  to  health  are 
found:  noise,  dust  and  lint  in  the  air  and  excessive  hu- 
midity. Says  a  Federal  Report:  "The  noise  of  the 
machinery  is  nerve-racking;  the  work  in  many  occupa- 
tions requires  constant  attention,  and  in  some  of  the 
rooms  the  air  is  hot  and  moist  to  an  unnecessary  and  in- 
jurious degree."  The  death  rate  for  cotton-mill  opera- 
tives is  unusually  high.  It  has  been  found  that  about  one 
in  every  two  deaths  among  them  between  the  ages  of 
fifteen  and  44  is  due  to  tuberculosis,  and  that  boys  be- 
tween fifteen  and  nineteen  years  have  a  death  rate  twice 
as  high  as  that  for  non-operatives ;  girls  of  the  same  age 
have  an  even  higher  death  rate.  Says  an  observer  of 
these  mill  children :  "I  could  not  get  myself  to  believe 
that  those  children  were  really  fourteen  years  old ;  physi- 
cally they  were  not  developed ;  dry  of  lip  and  shrunken 
of  body ;  children  without  light  in  their  eyes  and  without 
color  in  their  cheeks  and  without  song  on  their  lips ;  I 
asked  one  of  the  boys  whether  he  ever  played.  He  looked 
at  me  with  his  lifeless  eyes  as  though  in  surprise,  and 
answered,  'No,  I  never  played.' "  Consider  that  picture 
of  child  life  in  the  face  of  the  varied  activities  craved 
and  needed  by  the  growing  lad  and  the  young  girl.  In 
place  of  diversified  activities,  they  are  bound  to  the  ma- 
chine all  day  long,  repeating  for  eight  hours  a  few  end- 
less and  meaningless  motions.    From  this  constant  over- 


Courtesy   of  Sat.    Child   Labor   Cotr. 
Street  Trades 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  33 

strain  results  a  weakening  and  an  ultimate  degeneration 
of  the  muscles  and  the  general  health. 

In  addition  to  the  menace  to  health,  there  is  the  danger 
to  life  and  limb.  Children  of  this  age  are  not  yet  devel- 
oped sufficiently  to  avoid  accidents  in  some  of  the  dan- 
gerous occupations  of  the  factories.  It  was  found  by 
government  inspectors  a  few  years  ago  that,  although 
children  are  employed  in  the  comparatively  safe  occu- 
pations, the  rate  of  accidents  among  them  was  more  than 
double  that  of  the  older  workers.  The  deterioration 
wrought  on  the  health  of  the  child  is  alone  enough  to 
condemn  factory  work  for  children.  But  there  are  more 
sinister  results.  The  work  is  unskilled  monotonous  labor, 
the  performing  of  the  same  tedious  tasks  day  after  day 
and  week  after  week.  It  teaches  nothing  of  value;  it 
leads  to  nothing:  it  retards  rather  than  promotes  intel- 
lectual development.  It  is  blind  alley  work,  sooner  or 
later  leaving  its  followers  helpless  against  the  solid  wall 
of  skilled  labor's  competition.  An  occupation  that  in  this 
day  of  specialization  fits  a  boy  or  girl  for  nothing  and  is 
devoid  of  prospects  is  a  curse  rather  than  a  blessing.  In 
314  out  of  406  positions  investigated  in  New  York  there 
was  absolutely  no  training.  "The  vast  majority,"  says 
the  investigator,  "who  leave  school  enter  low  grade  in- 
dustries, untrained,  unguided,  unguarded,  where  they 
average  between  $4  and  $4.50  a  week  and  jump  from  job 
to  job,  with  consequent  loss  to  industry  and  themselves." 

And  so  long  as  these  children  are  in  the  mill  they  can- 
not go  to  school.  Often  the  mills  and  the  community 
provide  night  schools.  But  how  much  can  a  boy  of 
fourteen  learn  in  a  night  school  after    eight    hours    of 


34  THE    PATH   OF   LABOR 

deadening  factory  work?  "Every  child  should  work, 
but  at  work  that  develops,  not  deadens,"  says  the  Na- 
tional Child  Labor  Committee.  "Encourage  work  if  it 
trains  the  child  to  be  a  better  citizen.  Stop  it  if  it  merely 
makes  money  for  the  parent  or  the  employer.  We  must 
not  grind  the  seed  corn."  And  again,  "No  one  can  read 
the  record  of  conditions,  heat  and  exposure,  speed  and 
nervous  tension,  overstrain  and  monotony,  absence  of 
training  and  opportunity,  without  wondering  whether 
the  minimum  standards  set  up  in  the  new  law  are  not 
grotesquely  inadequate." 

But  physical  and  mental  hazards  do  not  tell  the  whole 
story  of  risk  placed  upon  young  life  by  work  in  the  mills 
and  factories.  Such  breaking  down  of  the  vitality,  such 
stunting  of  mental  development  leads  inevitably  to  moral 
ruin  in  a  large  number  of  cases.  Nearly  five  thousand 
cases  of  juvenile  delinquency  were  studied  a  few  years 
ago  by  government  statisticians,  to  discover  the  relation 
between  child  labor  and  delinquency.  More  than  half 
the  number  were  working  children,  and  that  portion  were 
responsible  for  62  per  cent,  of  the  total  charges.  The 
workers  among  these  offenders  were  also  guilty  of  the 
more  serious  charges  and  came  before  the  courts  most 
often.  In  spite  of  their  better  home  conditions  in  gen- 
eral, the  workers  went  wrong  most  frequently. 

Health,  mental  development,  and  morals  all  must  be 
risked  when  the  child  of  fourteen  is  allowed  to  begin  a 
wage-earning  career,  even  in  the  safer  confines  of  the 
factory. 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  35 

The  Invasion  of  the  Home 

Walk  down  the  aisles  cf  almost  any  department  store. 
On  every  hand  are  evidences  of  the  industry  of  baby 
fingers.  Here  are  the  gay  roses  and  violets  fashioned  by 
tiny  hands  working  wearily  long  after  more  fortunate 
children  are  in  bed.  Here  also  are  the  dainty  bootees 
and  dresses  for  the  new  baby ;  pretty  buckles  and  delicate 
jabots  and  rosettes,  all  made  by  little  children  in  tene- 
ment homes;  base  balls,  tennis  balls,  all  kinds  of  paper 
goods,  jewelry,  many  articles  of  apparel  for  both  men 
and  women,  a  never-ending  list  of  goods  carried  home 
from  the  factory  and  "finished"  by  small  hands  working 
untold  hours.  Young  Mary  Minora,  fifteen  years  old, 
who  had  worked  at  finishing  since  she  was  ten,  told  the 
Industrial  Relations  Commission  that  she  had  worked 
on  garments  three  days  a  week,  and  gone  to  school  two. 
Beginning  at  eight  in  the  morning  and  working  until  nine 
at  night,  she  could  make  sixty  cents  a  day  if  she  worked 
fast  enough.  In  Massachusetts  in  1914  one-fifth  of  all 
workers  in  home  industries  in  the  state  were  children 
under  fourteen,  and  one-half  of  all  the  people  working 
on  paper  goods  were  children.  When  the  Federal  Gov- 
ernment made  its  study  of  women  and  children  a  few 
years  ago,  it  discovered  that  over  91  per  cent,  of  the 
children  in  shops  were  fourteen  and  fifteen  years  old, 
and  none  were  under  twelve.  But  two-fifths  of  the 
children  working  in  tenement  industries  were  below  that 
age. 

Nobody  knows  or  could  estimate  the  working  hours  of 
these  children.  But  it  is  pretty  certain  that  wherever 
work  is  allowed  to  be  taken  into  the  homes  from  the  fac- 


36  THE    PATH    OF   LABOR 

tories,  children  are  pretty  sure  to  be  employed  on  it,  both 
before  and  after  school  hours,  even  if  the  school  laws 
are  obeyed.  Laws  regulating  the  hours  of  work  for 
children  here  are  valueless,  for  it  is  impossible  to  enforce 
them.  The  school  laws  themselves  are  difficult  of  en- 
forcement under  such  conditions.  Out  of  512  children 
between  six  and  thirteen  years  old  in  families  in  New 
York  where  tenement  work  was  done,  100  were  not  at- 
tending school.  Here  in  dirt  and  filth,  darkness  and 
disease,  little  children  work  long  days  for  a  mere  pit- 
tance. Says  one  investigator  concerning  one  of  the 
largest  branches  of  the  clothing  industry:  "This  ready- 
made  clothing  is  often  finished  in  the  homes  of  a  class  of 
people  whose  undernourished  condition,  due  to  poverty 
and  lack  of  thrift  and  hygienic  sense,  general  low  standard 
of  living  and  dirty  habits  make  them  most  susceptible  to 
contagious  diseases.  In  two  congested  blocks  of  New 
York  City  where  a  large  proportion  of  men's  clothing  is 
sent  to  be  finished,  the  death  rates  due  to  contagious 
diseases  are  abnormal."  "No  sweat-shop  goods"  in  the 
advertisement  does  not  protect  the  consumer  or  the 
worker;  for  while  the  garment  may  have  been  manufac- 
tured under  good  conditions,  it  may  also  have  been  finished 
under  the  worst  possible  conditions.  And  for  what  ?  "A 
little  handful  of  pay  on  a  few  Saturday  nights."  Turning 
shirt  cuffs  from  early  morning  until  late  at  night,  one  to  five 
cents  a  dozen  pairs ;  making  fancy  bows,  two  cents  a  dozen  ; 
turning  shirt- facings,  seven-eighths  of  a  cent  for  three 
dozen.  What  wonder  that  Louis  Hine,  who  is  recording 
social  history  in  this  country  by  the  photographs  he  is 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  37 

getting  of  some  of  these  conditions,  says  vehemently,  "The 
Home  is  for  the  Family — Industry  Keep  Out  I" 

On  the  Stage  and  in  the  Fields 

The  stage  children,  and  those  used  in  the  production  of 
motion  pictures,  must  not  be  forgotten.  The  National 
Child  Labor  Committee  is  finding  it  necessary  to  begin 
agitation  in  behalf  of  the  children  who  work  in  motion- 
picture  studios,  as  it  has  long  worked  against  allowing 
children  to  appear  on  the  stage.  In  this  new  and  rapidly- 
increasing  industry,  practices  have  been  found  which  can 
be  classed  as  nothing  short  of  cruel.  Nerve  shock  and 
fright  are  the  least  of  the  evils  to  which  children  are  be- 
ing subjected  in  the  production  of  motion  pictures. 

Children  in  agricultural  work  are  not  usually  thought 
of  as  having  any  relation  to  the  city ;  but  the  city,  with 
its  evil  conditions  for  children,  is  rapidly  invading  the 
country.  And  from  the  city  districts  many  children  go 
with  their  parents  into  the  rural  sections  to  assist  with  the 
crops.  Where  the  school  laws  are  not  stringent  or  not 
well  enforced,  the  long  hours  of  work  begin  in  May  and 
last  until  October  or  later.  The  children  return  to  the 
city  schools,  depleted  in  strength  and  ill  and  exhausted 
from  overwork  and  undernourishment.  Says  a  Phila- 
delphia school  principal :  "The  children  who  returned 
from  the  country  after  the  berry-picking  and  canning 
season  were  in  a  most  deplorable  condition,  morally, 
physically  and  intellectually,  due  to  improper  food,  poor 
housing  and  want  of  supervision.  They  are  mentally  unfit 
in  many  cases  even  to  remain  in  the  grade  from  which 
they  left.    It  is  as  though  some  unseen  hand  had  wiped 


38  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

their  minds  clear  of  all  they  had  previously  been  taught. 
At  the  age  of  fourteen  these  children  are  often  still  in 
the  third  and  fourth  grades." 

The  Results  to  Society 

When  England  went  into  the  South  African  War  and 
began  to  seek  recruits  among  the  mill  workers  an  appalling 
revelation  awaited  her.  Four  times  the  standard  for 
physical  efficiency  had  to  be  lowered,  and  still  10,000  out 
of  every  11,000  were  found  to  be  unfit  for  military  ser- 
vice. What  happened  in  England  in  those  years  has  been 
happening  also  in  this  country.  The  present  Federal  Army 
Draft  is  revealing  a  large  proportion  of  physically  unfit. 
Many  of  these  young  men  are  among  those  who  were 
reported  by  the  Federal  census  seven  years  ago  as  working 
children.  How  far  were  the  conditions  under  which  they 
worked  responsible  for  their  present  inability  to  measure 
up  to  the  army  requirements  ?  There  is  not  an  abundance 
of  evidence  on  hand  to  aid  in  determining  that,  but  scat- 
tered investigations  bear  witness.  A  study  of  newsboys 
in  Chicago  some  years  ago  revealed  that  one-third  of  the 
boys  sent  to  the  John  Worthy  School  were  suffering  from 
venereal  disease,  and  that  practically  all  the  newsboys  who 
came  to  the  school  were  a  third  below  normal  in  physical 
development.  A  recent  investigation  in  Massachusetts 
states  that  the  measurements  of  mill  boys  as  compared 
with  other  classes  of  boys  are  decidedly  low;  that  one- 
third  of  them  are  physically  undeveloped ;  that  even  tak- 
ing the  figures  for  the  mill  boys  themselves,  the  sixteen- 
year-old  boys  show  a  gain  of  only  0.64  of  an  inch  in  height 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  39 

over  the  fifteen-year-old  boys,  and  an  actual  decrease  of 
2^4  pounds  in  weight. 

Such  meagre  figures  are  but  a  feeble  indictment  of  the 
actual  conditions.  A  truer  estimate  is  found  in  the  de- 
spairing protest  of  the  young  worker  himself  when  his 
voice  occasionally  reaches  an  indifferent  public;  as  for 
example,  the  fourteen-year-old  Tennessee  girl,  pale  and 
thin  with  overwork,  who  drank  carbolic  acid  because  she 
had  worked  for  four  years,  ten  hours  a  day,  and  wanted 
"rest";  or  the  other  girl  of  fifteen  who  told  the  inves- 
tigator that  she  was  "too  beat  out  for  to  be  amused  when 
I  get  home  from  my  day's  work."  Her  ambition  was  to 
get  to  bed  as  fast  as  she  could,  and  she  hoped  she  would 
die  soon ;  or  the  young  textile  mill  workers  in  Massachu- 
setts, fourteen  years  old,  who,  when  questioned  about 
playing  base  ball,  replied  one  by  one,  time  after  time,  "O, 
I  don't  play  base  ball.  I'm  too  old.  I'm  working  now." 
Too  old  for  base  ball  at  fourteen ! 

Out  of  the  mouths  of  these  babes  is  our  civilization  con- 
demned. We  are  breeding  a  race  of  incompetents.  Physi- 
cal deterioration,  mental  deficiency,  moral  depravity, 
feeble-mindedness  all  follow  in  the  train  of  neglected 
childhood.  Writ  large  in  the  nation's  life  is  the  record  of 
this  neglect.  Health  specialists  are  discovering  an  in- 
crease of  degenerative  diseases.  This  means  the  tearing 
down  of  the  very  foundation  of  physical  life,  a  using  up 
of  the  vital  physical  force  upon  which  the  future  of  so- 
ciety is  dependent.  Educators  are  adding  their  testimony. 
There  are  five  million  illiterates  groping  their  way  through 
this  prosperous  land.  Says  Owen  Lovejoy,  "The  260,020 
illiterates  in  New  York  and  the  389,775  in  Georgia  are 


40  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

all  witnesses  to  our  industrial  selfishness.  They  are  the 
hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water;  they  build  the 
houses  they  cannot  occupy ;  they  till  the  soil,  but  do  not 
reap  the  harvest ;  they  prune  the  vine,  but  do  not  eat  the 
fruit  thereof.  And  when  the  illiterate  discovers  that  a 
crime  has  been  committed  against  him — then  what?  In 
the  majority  of  states  six  grades,  and  even  less,  are  re- 
quired before  children  are  allowed  to  go  to  work.  The 
average  American  child  is  sent  out  to  the  task  of  making 
a  living  equipped  with  six  grades  of  schooling.  And  our 
whole  national  life,  in  industry,  in  business,  in  the  pro- 
fessions, in  politics  and  even  in  our  diplomatic  service  bears 
the  hallmark  of  a  sixth  grade  educational  system."  The 
outlook  upon  life  of  a  child  of  fourteen,  emerging  illit- 
erate and  listless  after  five  or  six  years  of  hard  labor,  is 
hopelessly  blank,  and  it  is  no  wonder  that  so  many  children 
with  such  a  past  develop  into  tramps  and  into  the  great 
army  of  casual  laborers,  drifting  from  place  to  place,  with 
no  citizenship  and  no  part  nor  lot  in  the  common  life  of 
the  nation.  The  economist  also  has  something  to  say 
about  the  social  wreckage  involved.  He  points  out  that 
when  children  are  brought  into  the  factory  to  compete 
against  the  labor  of  men,  the  whole  family  earns  altogether 
on  an  average  no  more  than  the  father  would  earn  if 
they  were  not  allowed  to  enter  the  field  against  him.  In 
North  Carolina  the  mill  operative  reaches  a  maximum 
wage  of  13  cents  an  hour  when  he  is  between  25  and  29 
years  old.  The  Massachusetts  maximum  is  18  cents  an 
hour  between  the  ages  of  45  and  49.  Children  work  be- 
cause the  parents'  wages  are  low,  and  the  parents'  wages 
are  low  because  the  children  pull  wages  down.    Thus  the 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  41 

boy  who  helps  to  support  the  family  by  underbidding  his 
own  father  in  the  labor  market  is  scarcely  an  economic 
asset,  except  to  the  operators.  And  meantime  the  family 
life  is  broken  down,  the  health,  mentality  and  morals  of 
all  its  members  suffer,  and  society  pays  the  mounting  cost 
in  feeble-mindedness,  vice  and  drunkenness,  and  the 
broken  and  helpless  lives  of  men  and  women,  old  before 
their  time,  who  end  their  short  working  career  in  the 
state's  public  institutions. 

The  ordinary  burden  of  the  neglect  of  childhood  is  heavy 
enough.  But  it  will  be  many  times  increased  by  the  war. 
The  experience  of  the  warring  countries  indicates  beyond 
question  the  inevitably  disastrous  effects  upon  the  chil- 
dren. In  England  a  large  portion  of  the  elementary  school 
system  is  in  ruins,  three  million  children  between  the  ages 
of  twelve  and  seventeen  being  out  of  school.  Juvenile 
delinquency  in  both  England  and  Germany  has  increased 
at  an  alarming  rate.  This  nation  cannot  hope  to  escape 
the  war's  devastating  influence  upon  its  child  life.  Not 
many  reports  are  available,  but  in  Massachusetts  alone 
the  number  of  working  children  between  fourteen  and 
sixteen  years  old  increased  from  25,000  to  42,000  in  1916. 
and  according  to  present  figures  for  1917  the  number  will 
certainly  run  to  60,000. 

Fighting  the  Children's  Battle 

Nearly  fifteen  years  ago  the  National  Child  Labor  Com- 
mittee was  organized  to  rouse  the  nation  to  the  fact  of 
child  labor.  From  that  time  it  has  worked  unceasingly. 
No  state  has  escaped  its  influence.  State  by  state  it  has 
carried  on  the  crusade,  gaining  a  law  against  night  work 


42  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

here,  an  eight-hour-day  law  there;  in  one  group  of  states 
keeping  the  children  out  of  the  mines  before  they  were 
sixteen ;  in  another  out  of  the  factories  before  they  were 
fourteen.  Little  by  little  it  educated  the  nation  until  it 
become  possible  to  carry  through  to  success  the  new  Fed- 
eral law,  which  does  for  the  children  in  all  states  what 
had  been  done  for  them  in  only  a  few.  The  significance 
of  this  outstanding  achievement  lies  not  so  much  in  what 
it  actually  accomplishes,  as  in  the  fact  that  it  breaks  a 
path  for  higher  attainment.  It  gives  to  all  the  states  a 
minimum  standard,  above  which  each  may  rise  as  rapidly 
as  the  people  are  willing. 

It  clears  the  way  also  for  better  school  laws.  How  nec- 
essary this  campaign  is  may  be  seen  when  it  is  realized 
that  nearly  half  the  states  still  accept  poverty  as  a  legiti- 
mate excuse  for  exempting  from  the  child  labor  and  school 
laws.  The  need  now  is  for  a  campaign  in  each  state  for 
more  rigid  educational  laws.  The  new  Federal  law  will 
not  offer  the  protection  which  it  might,  and  the  states 
will  not  benefit  from  it  adequately,  unless  this  is  done. 
For  many  of  the  children  who  will  be  taken  from  the  fac- 
tories by  the  law  may  yet  be  allowed  to  go  into  local  es- 
tablishments, such  as  stores  and  bakeries,  and  in  this  way 
may  be  worse  oft"  than  before,  since  twenty-eight  states 
have  not  yet  adopted  an  eight-hour  law  for  children  in 
such  enterprises.  The  need  here  is  for  local  and  state 
action,  to  build  up  the  good  already  accomplished  by  the 
national  law.  The  way  is  cleared  now  also  for  better 
attention  to  the  boys  and  girls  between  fourteen  and  six- 
teen in  the  factories.  Says  the  Massachusetts  Child  Labor 
Committee:       "Has  the  state  performed  its  whole  task 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  43 

with  reference  to  the  30,000  children  in  its  mills  when  it 
has  secured  laws  limiting  their  hours  of  labor,  prohibiting 
their  employment  at  night,  and  providing  for  their  medical 
inspection  ?  There  is  much  more  to  do.  This  is  merely 
negative.  It  makes  the  task  of  the  children  less  weari- 
some, but  accomplishes  tittle  that  is  beneficial  in  a  posi- 
tive sense."  So  the  campaign  now  must  center  on  getting 
children  under  sixteen  out  of  the  factories ;  they  have  left 
school  at  the  age  when  they  most  need  guidance  and  vision  ; 
and  however  inadequate  the  school,  it  is  better  than  the 
factory,  for  the  aim  of  the  school  is  to  benefit  the  child, 
while  the  aim  of  the  factory  is  to  benefit  from  him. 

Another  step  in  the  campaign  is  the  providing  of 
medical  inspection  of  school  children.  Before  a  child  is 
allowed  to  enter  upon  a  career  of  wage-earning  he  should 
have  a  certificate  of  physical  fitness.  Some  states  re- 
quire physical  examination  before  allowing  the  child  to 
go  to  work,  but  this  is  not  enough.  Those  states  must 
go  further  and  provide  a  system  of  continuous  inspec- 
tion after  the  children  have  gone  to  work.  Only  in  this 
way  can  occupations  which  are  detrimental  to  the  health 
of  children  be  revealed  and  the  children  taken  from 
them  and  put  at  less  harmful  work.  Only  in  this  way 
also  can  incipient  diseases  be  discovered,  and  the  work 
permit  cancelled  until  the  child  is  restored  to  good  health. 

Laws  regulating  the  work  aspect  of  the  child's  life  are 
only  half  the  battle,  however.  The  whole  child  labor 
question  is  now  rapidly  becoming  a  question  of  educa- 
tional standards.  Along  with  laws  regulating  the  condi- 
tions of  the  children's  labor  must  go  school  laws,    and 


44  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

ordinances,  seeking  to  lengthen  the  educational  oppor- 
tunity for  children. 

To  this  end  every  state  needs  higher  compulsory  edu- 
cation laws.  Every  community  needs  part  time  and  con- 
tinuation schools.  In  Boston  a  system  of  continuation 
schools  has  been  worked  out  whereby  those  children  be- 
tween the  ages  of  fourteen  and  sixteen  who  have  gone 
to  work  are  required  to  attend  school  for  a  certain  period 
each  week.  These  schools  classify  the  students,  not  ac- 
cording to  educational  standards,  but  according  to  need. 
Those  who  have  no  decided  preference  for  any  branch 
of  work  are  put  into  general  improvement  classes,  where 
the  instruction  resembles  that  of  the  ordinary  day  school, 
but  is  made  somewhat  more  concrete.  Those  children 
having  a  well-defined  vocational  aim  are  given  training 
which  will  advance  them  toward  the  calling  to 
which  they  aspire.  A  third  group  is  composed  of  those 
whose  work  gives  opportunity  for  advancement  into 
skilled  occupations,  and  they  are  trained  for  promo- 
tion into  the  positions  ahead. 

An  inspiring  achievement  by  the  friends  of  voca- 
tional education  has  given  a  great  impetus  to  indus- 
trial education.  This  is  the  passage  of  the  Federal 
Act  for  Vocational  Education  adopted  in  February, 
1917.  The  law  carried  an  appropriation  of  $1,656,000 
for  disbursement  the  first  year,  with  annually  increas- 
ing amounts  up  to  the  eighth  year,  when  the  amount 
then  reached,  $7,162,200,  should  remain  the  annual 
appropriation.  This  Federal  money  is  now  at  the  dis- 
posal of  the  various  states,  and  may  be  claimed  by 
them  as  soon  as  they  meet  the  standards  and  require- 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  45 

merits  of  the  law.  Within  the  first  ten  months  after 
the  law  was  adopted,  forty-six  states  had  taken  the 
necessary  steps  to  secure  the  Federal  aid  and  establish 
a  system  of  vocational  education. 

Another  feature  of  the  campaign  is  the  securing  of 
mothers'  pension  laws  to  care  for  the  relatively  small 
number  of  working  children  who  are  aiding  widowed 
mothers. 

In  much  of  this  agitation  for  better  standards  of 
legislation,  in  education,  and  in  the  all-around  devel- 
opment of  child  life,  the  National  Child  Labor  Com- 
mittee has  been  the  leader.  To  characterize  the  work 
of  this  committee  merely  as  a  piece  of  reform  work 
is  to  miss  entirely  the  spirit  and  temper  of  the  whole 
enterprise.  From  the  beginning  it  has  shown  no 
quarter  to  the  exploiters  of  childhood.  Willing  to 
take  any  concession  it  could  gain,  it  has  yet  held 
aloft  the  high  purpose  of  developing  every  child  to 
the  fullest  possible  extent  of  his  capacities,  physical, 
mental  and  moral.  It  meets  there  on  common  ground 
with  the  Protestant  churches  whose  principles  de- 
clare for  the  abolition  of  child  labor  and  "for  the 
fullest  possible  development  of  every  child,  especially 
by  the  provision  of  proper  education  and  recreation." 

Each  of  these  advance  steps  will  aid  in  substantial 
measure  in  making  necessary  adjustments  in  the  in- 
dustrial order.  They  will  aid  in  eliminating  the  waste 
and  friction  incident  to  misplaced  labor  power.  They 
will  help  in  the  democratization  of  our  educational 
system. 

It  is  for  the  Christian  to  remember,  however,  that 


46  THE    PATH    OF  LABOR 

no  society  can  endure  which  does  not  recognize  that 
full  opportunity  must  be  extended  to  every  child. 
These  are  ameliorations;  they  are  not  final  remedies. 
The  Christian  conscience  can  never  be  content  until 
there  is  no  privileged  group  in  society,  benefiting 
from  the  labor  of  those  who  perform  the  hard  and 
dangerous  work  of  the  world.  We  can  never  be  con- 
tent until  the  child's  future  usefulness  and  happiness, 
not  the  present  prosperity  of  the  family  or  the  in- 
dustry, are  the  determining  factors  in  his  vocation ;  not 
until  every  Christian  catches  the  vision  of  a  world 
where  no  class  is  condemned  to  carry  the  heavy  bur- 
dens throughout  life,  while  other  classes  escape  with 
the  easier  tasks. 

Among  Women 

In  1910  there  were  over  eight  million  wage-earning 
women  in  American  industries.  The  number  since 
that  time  has  unquestionably  grown  very  much  larger, 
and  with  the  pressure  upon  women  due  to  the  war, 
there  is  sure  to  be  a  great  new  influx  of  women  into 
industrial  life.  Contrary  to  popular  conception,  these 
women  have  not  willfully  left  the  old  home  tasks  for 
work  in  the  factories.  What  they  have  done  is  to 
follow  their  traditional  occupations  as  those  occupa- 
tions have  been  transferred  from  the  home  to  the  fac- 
tory. Women  still  prepare  the  food,  make  the  cloth- 
ing, launder  the  linen  and  perform  countless  other 
tasks  necessary  for  the  family,  but  they  do  this  work 
in  the  factory  instead  of  in  the  home.  Once  out  of 
the  home  in  pursuit  of  their  traditional  calling,  how- 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  47 

ever,  and  under  the  necessity  of  providing  for  their 
own  life  and  often  for  dependents,  they  have  ranged 
far  afield.  In  the  past  decade  they  have  entered  many 
occupations  heretofore  closed  to  them,  and  by  the 
time  the  readjustments  of  the  present  year  are  made, 
few  indeed  will  be  the  occupations  not  entered  by 
women. 

What  are  the  conditions  under  which  this  army  is 
working?  What  are  the  questions  that  confront  these 
women  in  their  new  fields  of  labor? 

The  Long  Day 

First  in  importance  comes  the  long  day.  A  waitress 
was  testifying  at  a  conference  on  the  eight-hour  day. 
"I  don't  think  anybody's  got  a  home  any  more,"  she 
said.  "You  all  come  into  the  restaurants  for  your 
meals.  Then  for  twelve  hours  or  more  we're  cleaning 
and  scrubbing  and  digging  for  you,  and  feeding  you 
all  for  the  measly  sum  of  $5  a  week.  The  girls  say  to 
each  other  over  and  over  again,  'Why  isn't  there  a 
law?'" 

For  a  decade  and  more  the  working  women  them- 
selves and  those  who  are  interested  in  their  welfare 
have  been  raising  continually  the  same  question, 
"Why  isn't  there  a  law?" 

Yet  up  to  the  present  time  only  five  states  and  the 
District  of  Columbia  have  restricted  the  working  day 
of  women  to  eight  hours.  Some  states  have  estab- 
lished nine  hours,  some  ten,  as  the  legal  length  of  the 
working  day,  and  some  have  adopted  practically  no 
protective  measures  whatever  to  guard  against  over- 


48  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

work.  Hence  it  is  still  possible  to  overwork  women 
in  the  majority  of  states  with  no  fear  either  of  the  law 
or  public  opinion. 

That  the  situation  is  taken  advantage  of  is  abundantly 
evident.  The  special  investigations  made  by  the  Fed- 
eral Government  in  its  study  of  women  and  children 
revealed  that  in  addition  to  the  overlong  hours  in  the 
industries  studied,  overtime  work  was  frequently  re- 
quired. In  the  cotton  textile  industry  the  legal  hours 
ranged  from  58  to  66;  in  the  men's  clothing  industry, 
even  though  the  study  was  made  in  a  time  of  depres- 
sion, and  the  facts  of  overwork  very  difficult  to  secure, 
it  was  found  that  in  33  per  cent,  of  the  establishments 
visited  in  New  York  and  23  of  these  in  Pennsylvania, 
even  the  scant  provisions  of  the  state  to  protect  the 
women  were  violated.  The  National  Consumers' 
League  discovered,  in  interviewing  a  thousand 
women,  that  58  per  cent,  exceeded  the  54-hour  limit 
of  the  state;  that  20  per  cent,  worked  twelve  hours 
a  day,  and  that  a  third  of  the  number  did  not  have 
even  one  day  of  rest  a  week. 

These  are  typical  examples.  They  leave  no  room 
for  encouragement  that  even  the  inadequate  laws  now 
in  existence,  limiting  women's  work  to  nine  and  ten 
hours  a  day,  are  supplying  a  minimum  of  legal  protec- 
tion. Every  available  report  tells  over  again  the  same 
story.  Wherever  there  is  no  state  law  to  stand  be- 
tween the  women  and  the  greed,  or  the  indifference 
or  the  helplessness  of  the  employer,  they  are  the  vic- 
tims of  overwork.  It  is  fair  to  assume  that  a  large 
proportion  of  the  wage-earning  women  of  the  country 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  49 

are  suffering  all  the  disadvantages  which  come  in  the 
train  of  the  excessively  long  day. 

Quite  apart  from  the  physical,  the  mental  and  the 
moral  results  of  such  a  condition,  there  is  the  ques- 
tion of  the  right  of  every  individual  to  the  leisure  to 
develop  his  own  life.  The  universal  need  for  expan- 
sion, the  inner  compulsion  of  every  human  being  to 
develop  his  own  individual  life,  the  imperative  desire 
for  growth  and  the  expression  of  life  in  terms  of 
something  more  than  the  bare  necessities  of  physical 
living — all  these  are  crushed  out,  life  is  stunted  and 
deformed  under  the  pressure  of  a  day  which  leaves  no 
time  or  strength  for  these  fundamental  needs.  What 
wonder  that  the  point  of  keenest  interest  among  the 
women,  then,  is  the  shorter  day? 

Night  work  for  women  has  been  condemned  by  all 
civilized  countries  but  our  own.  Notwithstanding 
the  obvious  evils,  which  are  patent  to  the  most  care- 
less observer,  only  five  states  prohibit  it.  Custom 
has  been  a  strong  barrier  against  the  employment  of 
women  at  night.  But  new  war  industries  are  break- 
ing down  those  barriers,  and  the  pressure  of  after- 
the-war  conditions  will  force  women  into  it  in  greater 
numbers  than  ever  before.  In  England,  where  women 
had  not  worked  at  night  in  factories  for  many  years, 
they  came  back  in  full  force  under  the  pressure  of  the 
war.  So  in  Connecticut,  women,  unprotected  by  a 
state  law  when  the  munitions  industry  invaded  the 
state,  have  been  conspicuous  in  the  night  work  in  the 
factories.     In  Illinois  also  women  are  working  ten- 


50  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

hour  shifts,  day  and  night,  amid  all  the  evil  conditions 
incident  to  night  work. 

A  Living  Wage 

What  can  a  girl  or  woman  live  on?  When  the 
Minimum  Wage  Board  of  Massachusetts  first  met,  an 
employer  on  the  board  suggested  that  the  place  to 
begin  with  their  deliberations  was  to  find  out  what 
it  cost  a  working  woman  to  live  in  Massachusetts. 
They  deliberated  for  a  meeting  or  two.  What  kind  of 
a  room  would  a  dollar  a  week  pay  for?  What  was  the 
lowest  possible  figure  for  three  meals  a  day?  Should 
the  girl  have  enough  to  pay  for  any  sort  of  entertain- 
ment? They  asked  themselves  these  and  similar  ques- 
tions, and  finally  taking  everything  into  consideration 
they  agreed  upon  a  minimum  figure.  Then  the  chair- 
man of  the  board  said  quietly,  "I  call  your  attention 
to  the  fact  that  95  per  cent,  of  the  working  women  of 
this  state  are  earning  less  than  that  figure."  Said  one 
member  who  was  present  at  that  meeting,  "It  was 
like  a  bombshell !  It  had  never  entered  their  heads 
before  that  in  paying  wages  they  were  providing  the 
means  of  life  for  human  beings." 

Within  the  past  few  years  there  have  been  many 
other  scientific  attempts  to  arrive  at  the  amount  which 
it  takes  to  keep  a  human  life  in  decency.  Employers 
on  the  witness  stands  have  drawn  up  model  budgets 
by  which  girls  could  exist  on  eight  dollars  a  week. 
Minimum  Wage  Commissions  have  been  at  work  dis- 
covering how  much  it  costs  to  live  in  different  cities 
under  various  conditions.     Philanthropically  inclined 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  51 

people  have  gone  into  factories  and  tried  living  for  a 
week  on  what  they  could  earn  and  have  come  back  to 
tell  what  living  on  six  or  eight  dollars  a  week  means. 
Out  of  it  all  has  come  a  general  agreement,  even 
among  the  most  scientific,  that  seven  dollars  a  week 
represents  the  level  of  bare  necessities,  just  enough 
to  keep  body  and  soul  together.  Eight  dollars  a  week 
is  considered  not  enough  to  live  decently  upon  under 
American  conditions. 

But  what  are  the  figures  which  tell  the  incredible 
tale  of  how  much  this  great  army  of  women  actually 
earn  or  rather  what  they  receive? 

Figures,  though  not  abundant,  are  not  wanting 
here.  Fifty  per  cent,  are  receiving  less  than  the 
amount  agreed  upon  as  the  lowest  subsistence  level. 
Over  75  per  cent,  receive  less  than  eight  dollars  a 
week,  and  only  23  per  cent,  are  getting  the  amount 
agreed  upon  as  necessary  for  a  living  wage. 

A  Massachusetts  study  revealed  that  among  12,000 
women  over  eighteen  years  of  age  ten  per  cent,  were 
receiving  less  than  four  dollars  a  week;  the  general 
conclusion  drawn  from  the  entire  report  was  that 
almost  half  of  them  were  living  on  less  than  $6,  and 
three-fourths  of  them  on  less  than  eight. 

In  New  York  City  it  was  discovered  that  87  per 
cent,  of  the  women  waiters  whose  incomes  were 
studied  received  less  than  $9  a  week,  which  is  the 
sum  agreed  upon  by  investigators  as  the  lowest  min- 
imum on  which  a  woman  can  live  in  that  citv.  Even 
among  those  who  could  depend  upon  receiving  food 


52  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

and  tips  in  addition,  31  per  cent,  were  not  getting  a 
living  wage. 

That  such  conditions  are  not  confined  to  industrial 
centers  is  revealed  in  the  study  of  such  a  typical 
American  city  as  Springfield,  Illinois.  Here  it  was 
found  that  women  in  laundries  received  $6  a  week, 
salesgirls  in  the  five  and  ten  cent  stores  were  getting 
as  low  as  $4  and  $5  a  week.  The  investigators  who 
made  this  report  declared  that  there  is  no  reason  to 
believe  such  conditions  exceptional;  they  are  typical, 
and  represent  another  kind  of  America  than  the  tradi- 
tional one,  and  one  that  is  destined  to  gain  the  ascen- 
dancy. They  frankly  condemned  the  low  standards 
prevailing.  In  Ohio  also,  the  Industrial  Commission 
found  that  out  of  more  than  110,000  women  over  a 
third  worked  for  less  than  $7  a  week  and  over  half  for 
less  than  eight.  Among  these  were  many  whose 
work  demanded  a  high  degree  of  skill. 

Last  year  the  working  women  in  a  small  Middle- 
Western  university  town  went  on  strike  demanding 
increased  wages.  Here  at  the  very  door  of  the  uni- 
versity were  all  the  problems  of  an  industrial  center; 
underpaid  working  girls,  underpaid  foreigners,  in- 
creased cost  of  living  and  a  strike.  When  the  facts 
came  to  light  it  was  found  that  the  small  industrial 
plant  was  making  unusual  profits,  that  two  professors 
of  the  university  held  stock  in  the  concern,  and  that 
the  girls  were  working  for  an  average  of  $6.50  to 
$7.50  a  week. 

It  is  not  necessary  for  the  average  wage-earner  to 
read  a  book  to  find  out  how  little  he  can  do  with  his 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  53 

income.  But  a  budget  figured  down  to  the  last  cent 
cannot  be  without  interest  to  women  who  must, 
whether  they  will  or  not,  profit  by  the  work  of  these 
other  women  who  must  live  upon  that  budget.  A 
typical  attempt  to  discover  what  a  minimum  wage 
will  buy  is  this  by  the  Massachusetts  Minimum  Wage 
Commission,  figured  for  women  in  factories  where 
cloaks,  suits,  dresses  and  waists  are  made: 

Per  Week 

Board    and    room $5.75 

Clothing   1.50 

Laundry    25 

Car  fare  10 

Doctor  and  dentist 25 

Church    10 

Vacation  25 

Education     18 

Recreation   25 

Savings   25 

Incidentals     10 

$8.98 

It  is  a  significant  fact  that  after  eight  weeks  had 
been  spent  in  an  effort  to  arrive  at  the  lowest  pos- 
sible amount,  and  that  amount  was  found  to  be  $8.98, 
it  had  to  be  cut  down  to  $8.75  because  the  higher 
figure  was  so  far  above  the  wages  being  paid  that  it 
was  not  possible  to  enforce  so  abrupt  a  change. 

The  whole  tale  is  not  told  when  the  weekly  wage 
is  known.  For  lost  time  must  come  out  of  even  that 
meagre  wage.  The  prevailing  custom  is:  the  lower 
the  pay,  the  more  frequently  is  lost  time  deducted.  The 
stenographer  in  an  office  may  lose  time  from  illness 


54  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

or  other  causes  and  have  no  reduction  in  her  salary. 
But  every  day,  and  sometimes  every  hour,  lost  by  the 
girl  in  the  factory  must  be  paid  for  out  of  the  scant 
weekly  earning. 

Add  to  that  again  the  hazard  of  unemployment. 
Many  of  the  trades  which  employ  great  numbers  of 
women  are  seasonal  trades,  driving  the  workers  al- 
most beyond  endurance  at  certain  seasons,  and  laying 
them  off  entirely  at  others.  During  the  dull  season 
it  is  often  impossible  to  find  work  in  other  industries, 
and  many  days,  and  sometimes  weeks,  pass  before 
work  is  again  found.  It  is  estimated  that  anywhere 
from  12  to  30  per  cent,  of  time  is  lost  in  this  way. 

There  is  small  comfort  in  the  view  usually  held  that 
these  women  work  for  "pin  money,"  and  are  therefore 
under  no  hardship  because  of  low  wages  or  irregular 
employment.  For  the  facts  do  not  bear  out  this  cheer- 
ful view.  According  to  the  reports  available,  "pin 
money"  workers  are  such  rare  exceptions  that  they 
merit  no  attention  in  any  study  of  the  situation. 

Nor  is  there  much  more  comfort  in  the  belief  that 
these  women  live  at  home.  A  large  proportion  of  them 
do.  But  they  come  from  bankrupt  families,  families 
so  poor  that  it  is  impossible  for  them  to  live  without 
the  assistance  of  these  wage-earners.  Hence,  far 
from  being  better  off  financially,  they  are  often  worse 
off,  having  no  independent  life,  giving  all  of  their 
earnings  to  the  family,  and  receiving  in  return  even 
less  than  the  amount  would  purchase  were  they  free 
to  spend  it  on  their  own  living.     One  report  reveals 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  55 

that  more  than  50  per  cent,  of  the  women  of  twenty- 
five  years  and  older  gave  their  entire  earnings  to  their 
families;  and  a  study  of  younger  women  reveals  75 
per  cent,  of  them  contributing  all  to  the  support  of 
the  family. 

The  public  has  been  slow  to  admit  any  relation  be- 
tween wages  and  morals.  It  has  very  naturally  and 
legitimately  repudiated  the  implication  that  working 
women  were  any  more  susceptible  to  moral  danger 
than  any  other  class  of  women.  But  the  fact  is  that 
low  wages,  long  hours  and  ugly  surroundings  place  a 
pressure  upon  life  which  no  one  ought  to  be  called 
upon  to  bear.  It  falls  heaviest  upon  the  working 
women,  who  are  denied  the  legitimate  avenues  of  ex- 
pression for  their  normal  interest  in  life.  Jane  Addams 
tells  us  of  the  experience  of  a  young  Scotch  girl  who 
worked  in  a  candy  factory  to  support  a  blind  sister 
and  paralytic  father.  For  three  years  she  worked  hard 
and  conscientiously,  adding  to  her  factory  earnings 
by  evening  work  at  glove-making.  In  the  midst  of 
this  hard  and  monotonous  experience  she  became 
acquainted  with  a  chorus  singer  in  a  cheap  theater. 
The  contrast  between  her  own  endless  drudgery  and 
the  glitter  of  her  friend's  career  broke  down  her  de- 
votion to  her  family,  and  she  disappeared,  declaring 
that  she  would  never  go  into  a  factory  again.  The 
pious  father  was  convinced  that  she  was  "ensnared 
by  the  devil";  Miss  Addams  says  that  she  was  un- 
able to  dismiss  the  case  with  that  simple  explanation, 
but  was  haunted  with  all  sorts  of  social  implications. 

Mrs.   Louise  DeKoven  Bowen,  who  has  for  years 


56  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

been  associated  with  the  Juvenile  Protective  League 
in  Chicago,  tells  of  a  young  widow  trying  to  support 
herself  and  her  four-year-old  child  on  the  $3.50  a  week 
she  earned  in  a  down-town  restaurant.  She  paid  $2  a 
week  for  her  rent,  and  with  the  remaining  $1.50  feci 
the  child.  Her  own  meals  she  snatched  from  th( 
left-overs  on  the  plates  at  the  restaurant.  She  waii 
pretty  and  attractive  and  began  to  receive  invitations 
to  dine  out  with  men,  and  accepted  because  she  felt 
that  she  must  have  a  good  meal  now  and  then.  One 
man  with  whom  she  dined  realized  the  temptations  of 
her  situation,  and  went  to  the  United  Charities,  say- 
ing that  unless  something  were  done  for  her  she  would 
be  forced  into  an  immoral  life. 

Recent  reports  of  vice  commissions  indicate  clearly 
that  the  pressure  of  poverty  is  no  small  factor  in 
forcing  women  into  a  life  of  prostitution.  The  pres- 
sure comes  not  only  from  wages  insufficient  to  main- 
tain life  and  the  denial  of  all  the  instinct  for  beauty 
and  pleasure,  but  also  in  forcing  young  women  to  live 
in  cheap  neighborhoods  which  are  honeycombed  with 
vicious  places,  and  which  come  to  be  an  ever-present 
evil  suggestion. 

Working  Conditions 

"How  is  it  that  you  are  able  to  maintain  your 
rapid  production  without  premiums?"  a  mill  superin- 
tendent was  asked.  "Oh,"  he  replied,  "We  keep  the 
piece  rate  so  low  that  they  have  to  keep  right  at  it 
in  order  to  make  a  living." 


i     urtesy 

\\  ON  i  '.    I'  \i  Sai  uon 


»/   1/i.v.v  Woodberry 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  57 

And  the  workers  who  found  it  necessary  to  "keep 
right  at  it"  in  order  to  make  any  kind  of  a  living  were 
compelled  to  remain  in  the  one  posture  best  adapted 
to  the  process,  without  interruption,  if  they  were  to 
maintain  the  speed  and  accuracy  demanded. 

Of  all  the  complaints  of  workers  against  the  condi- 
tions of  their  work,  none  is  heard  more  frequently 
than  the  protest  against  the  speed  and  monotony  in- 
volved. Day  after  day,  week  after  week,  they  are 
driven  to  the  very  point  of  exhaustion  in  order  to 
keep  up  with  the  speed  set  by  the  ever-quickening 
machines.  In  the  early  years  of  the  textile  industry 
a  woman  tended  two  slowly-running  looms.  The 
number  gradually  increased  until  now  in  some  of  the 
processes  she  is  compelled  to  look  out  for  twelve  or 
sixteen.  Everywhere  there  is  the  drive  of  the  indus- 
trial system  ;  not  only  the  women  in  the  factories,  but 
women  in  large  offices  are  driven  far  beyond  health 
safety  by  the  late  afternoon  rush  of  every  day.  It  is 
part  of  the  price  which  is  paid  by  a  civilization  intent 
upon  the  making  of  things  without  regard  to  what  the 
process  will  do  to  the  makers. 

Added  to  the  strain  of  speed  is  intolerable  mon- 
otony. A  telephone  operator  answers  about  225 
calls  every  hour,  and  each  call  requires  six  different 
operations.  Those  six  different  operations  are  per- 
formed over  and  over,  a  hundred,  two  hundred,  some- 
times in  emergencies,  three  hundred  times  every  hour 
for  eight  hours  at  least.  An  operator  who  has  had 
long  experience  in  one  of  the  Eastern  cities  says  that 


58  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

before  the  eight-hour  day  went  into  effect,  it  was  not 
uncommon  for  girls  to  drop  to  the  floor,  one  after  an- 
other, from  exhaustion  during  the  last  working  day 
of  the  week.  In  the  sewing  trades  women  and  girls 
sit  for  long  hours  amid  the  roar  of  machinery,  watch- 
ing a  machine  that  carries  twelve  needles  and  sets 
four  thousand  stitches  a  minute.  In  the  canneries 
women  work  the  long  day  through,  their  eyes  and 
attention  constantly  fixed  on  moving  conveyors; 
under  the  hands  of  other  women  in  canneries  pass  54 
to  80  cans  a  minute  to  be  capped. 

In  the  old-style  laundries  it  is  necessary  to  throw  the 
whole  weight  of  the  body,  sixteen  times  a  minute,  on  the 
lever,  and  to  apply  at  least  100  pounds  of  pressure.  In 
the  course  of  one  hour  a  hundred  thousand  pounds  of 
energy  are  required  of  one  woman  at  a  single  machine. 
A  minister  who  was  interested  in  the  condition  of  the 
laundry  workers  of  his  city  tried  one  of  the  machines  and 
said  that  it  taxed  his  strength  to  throw  the  lever.  The 
girl  in  charge  told  him  that  she  became  so  overtired  that 
she  must  frequently  take  a  day  off. 

Other  Complaints 

There  are  still  other  complaints  about  working 
conditions.  Systems  of  petty  fines  in  various  indus- 
tries rob  the  workers  of  even  part  of  their  meagre 
earnings.  A  few  years  ago  the  waitresses  in  Chicago 
were  striking;  one  of  the  grievances  advanced  by  the 
girl  who  was  picketing  the  restaurant  was  that  when- 
ever she  made  a  mistake  in  taking  an  order,  or  when- 
ever the  customer  made  a  mistake  and  charged  her 


IN   CITY   INDUSTRIES  59 

with  it,  she  was  compelled  to  pay  for  the  food  sent 
back  to  the  kitchen,  but  not  permitted  to  have  it  for 
her  own  meal.  In  other  establishments  workers  are 
fined  for  tardiness  and  for  mistakes  in  sewing. 

Conditions  of  safety  and  sanitation  appear  often  in 
the  list  of  grievances.  No  one  who  is  conscious  of 
the  dependence  of  the  country  upon  its  wage-earning 
women  can  forget  the  series  of  fearful  fires,  a  few 
years  ago,  by  which  scores  of  women  and  girls  lost 
their  lives.  To  the  horror  of  all  who  read  about  it 
last  year,  a  shop  which  had  witnessed  the  crowning 
tragedy  of  the  series  was  found  to  countenance  once 
more  exactly  the  same  conditions ;  the  manufacturer, 
brought  into  court,  was  fined  a  small  sum  and  the 
matter  thus  dismissed. 

A  study  made  in  the  glass  industry  some  years  ago 
revealed  that  sanitary  conveniences  were  woefully 
lacking.  Says  the  report,  "For  all  female  workers,  the 
provision  of  proper  washing  facilities  is  at  least  highly 
desirable,  while  for  many  such  workers,  proper  con- 
veniences for  washing  and  also  for  dressing  are  im- 
perative as  matters  of  decency."  Yet  of  the  116  fac- 
tories where  women  were  employed  which  were 
visited  by  the  government  agents,  nearly  three-fourths 
of  them  were  unequipped  with  washrooms,  only  eight 
had  rest  rooms  and  but  five  provided  lunch  rooms. 

Even  in  such  small  centers  as  the  leading  cities  in 
the  State  of  Maine,  a  report  by  the  State  Bureau  of 
Labor  reveals  that  there  were  no  lunch  rooms  where 
meals  were  prepared  available  for  the  girls,  and  that 


60  THE   PATH   OF   LABOR 

in  no  case  was  there  provision  of  rest  rooms,  recreation 
rooms  or  good  toilet  facilities. 

All  of  these  conditions  have  an  effect  too  important 
to  be  overlooked.  Says  a  report  of  the  United  States 
Health  Service,  concerning  general  working  condi- 
tions, "If  an  employee  works  and  lives  in  squalor  and 
semi-darkness,  he  gradually  loses  his  self-respect, 
grows  careless  in  his  habits,  becomes  discouraged,  and 
in  short  lacks  incentive  to  conserve  his  health,  and 
therefore  becomes  a  hazard  in  any  occupation." 

But  a  far  more  serious  matter  is  the  direct  threat  to  life 
and  health  which  is  involved  in  the  very  nature  of 
many  occupations.  Tuberculosis  claims  many  victims 
from  among  the  industrial  wage-earners;  garment 
workers,  cigar  makers  and  tobacco  workers,  clerks, 
book-keepers  and  office  assistants,  compositors  and 
printers,  machinists,  and  other  groups  run  a  dispro- 
portionate risk  because  of  the  nature  of  the  work  per- 
formed. In  a  study  of  garment  workers  made  by  the 
United  States  Health  Service,  it  was  found  that  the 
rate  of  tuberculosis  among  this  group  was  three  times 
as  high  as  among  United  States  soldiers,  and  of  course 
highest  among  the  most  poorly  paid.  Spinal  defects 
were  also  common  ;  there  was  much  subnormal  vision  ; 
and  nervous  affections  were  frequent.  The  piece 
workers,  driven  to  exhaustion  in  rush  seasons,  suffered 
acutely  from  introspection  and  forebodings  over  the 
future  when  the  dull  season  set  in  and  the  reaction 
began.  Among  the  1,000  women  examined,  but  2  per 
cent,  were  free  from  disease.  The  conclusion  of  the 
report  was  that  there  existed  a  clear  and  direct  con- 


IN    CITY   INDUSTRIES  61 

nection  between  the  occupation  and  the  diseases  from 
which  the  women  suffered. 

The  striking  girls  in  a  twine  factory  in  Illinois  last 
year  complained  that  the  dust  and  lint  were  so  thick 
in  the  air  that  they  caused  eruptions  on  their  faces  and 
hands.  It  is  a  commonplace  that  waitresses  suffer 
with  foot  troubles,  and  that  the  heavy  strain  of  stand- 
ing for  long  hours  and  carrying  heavy  burdens 
destroys  the  physical  capacity  for  maternity. 

The  Fear  of  the  Future 

The  risk  of  the  working  woman  is  not  complete 
when  the  tale  of  her  long  hours,  low  wages,  and  bad 
working  conditions  has  been  told.  There  is  the  con- 
stant fear  of  the  jobless  future.  Living  on  the  lowest 
minimum  which  can  support  life,  what  is  she  to  do  if 
the  job  fails?  Even  in  normal  times  or  in  times  of 
unusual  activity  like  the  present,  there  is  still  the 
problem  of  finding  work  for  many  women.  In  times 
of  depression,  employment  offices  of  all  kinds  are 
crowded  with  women  seeking  work  of  any  kind  suf- 
ficient to  keep  body  and  soul  together  until  the  perma- 
nent place  appears.  At  all  times  there  are  sudden 
shifts  in  industrial  processes  of  which  the  wage- 
earners  are  the  chief  victims.  Scores  of  girls  may  be 
released  from  employment,  sometimes  without  a 
moment's  notice ;  some  other  industry  in  the  same 
state  may  need  girls,  and  even  if  the  work  is  such  that 
replacement  is  easy,  there  is  yet  no  adequate  machin- 
ery provided  either  by  the  local  community  or  the 
state,  to  aid  in  making  the  adjustment.     The  wage- 


62  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

earner  must  bear  the  bulk  of  suffering  which  results 
from  this  chaotic  state  of  industry. 

In  Bondage  to  the  Job 

Every  one  of  these  problems  concerning  the  working 
women  of  this  country  is  destined  to  be  accentuated 
many  times  by  the  present  war.  Women  in  uncounted 
numbers  are  rushing  into  new  and  untried  occupations. 
A  large  proportion  of  them  have  gone  to  stay.  Never 
again  will  they  find  their  horizon  bounded  by  the  simple 
duties  of  the  home.  They  have  entered  the  industrial 
ranks  as  permanent  factors.  New  dangers  will  confront 
this  army  of  untried  workers.  Not  only  will  long  hours 
and  low  wages  and  bad  conditions  bear  upon  them,  but 
new  diseases  will  attack  them.  In  the  munitions  industry 
especially,  which  women  are  entering  in  such  numbers, 
the  danger  to  their  health  and  life  will  be  such  as  does 
not  face  women  in  the  older  industries.  Strange 
poisons,  which  no  one  has  yet  studied  sufficiently  to 
know  their  effects  upon  human  life  will  threaten  them ; 
from  the  meagre  reports  on  these  factories  thus  far 
made,  it  is  evident,  even  in  the  few  months  for  which 
records  are  available,  that  the  workers  are  suffering 
unusual  danger.  One  study  declares  that  it  is  a  rarity 
to  find  a  worker  who  has  been  in  a  certain  industry 
for  more  than  eight  months  who  is  not  a  victim  of 
poisoning  from  chemicals  used  in  the  industry. 
Reports  from  communities  which  have  gone  into  the 
munitions  business  reveal  almost  incredibly  bad  living 
and  transportation  facilities  for  the  women  workers. 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  63 

The  Larger  Question  of  Human  Welfare 

No  consideration  of  this  situation  which  ends  with 
the  individual  woman  and  her  just  grievances  can 
throw  adequate  light  upon  what  it  all  means  in  terms 
of  human  welfare  and  race  advancement.  Overwork 
means  continual  fatigue;  fatigue  means  not  only  a 
lowered  resistance  power  to  disease,  but  it  means  the 
generating  of  an  active  poison  which  saps  the  vital 
energy  of  the  worker  day  by  day.  Testimony  by  the 
volume  is  available  showing  what  overwork  does  to 
woman's  capacity  for  motherhood.  It  is  no  less  a  foe 
of  the  spiritual  life.  If  the  womanhood  of  this  country 
is  to  have  opportunity  for  anything  like  normal  de- 
velopment, overwork  must  be  destroyed. 

The  living  wage  is  likewise  a  necessity  for  normal 
living.  When  the  woman  works  for  less  than  will 
maintain  life  in  safety  and  decency,  at  that  point  begins 
a  long  train  of  evils  which  do  not  cease  with  her  life. 
For  low  wages  mean  bad  housing  and  undernourish- 
ment; the  next  step  is  sickness;  then  comes  loss  of 
time,  with  consequently  less  income.  So  the  vicious 
circle  continues;  and  the  results  are  passed  on  to  the 
woman's  children,  who  are  born  without  strength,  who 
grow  up  without  the  care  which  a  normal  mother  can 
give,  and  who  add  to  the  country's  burden  of  physical 
degenerates. 

Wages  determine  every  detail  of  life  ;  they  determine 
of  what  value  the  woman  shall  be  as  a  citizen,  and  as 
a  mother,  for  they  determine  the  level  of  life  at  which 
she  shall  live.     They  determine  even  the  length  of  her 


64  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

life,  and  the  character  and  training  she  will  bring  to 
her  task  of  motherhood.  Development,  whether  physi- 
cal, mental,  moral  or  spiritual,  costs  money,  for 
development  comes  by  way  of  the  things  which  make 
decent  living  available. 

Insanitary  conditions,  the  strain  of  the  speed  at 
which  modern  industry  is  run,  and  the  deadly 
monotony  of  modern  industrial  processes  all  leave 
their  telltale  mark  upon  the  woman's  life,  and  not  upon 
hers  only,  but  upon  the  children  which  come  after  her. 
"I  know  girls,"  says  Mrs.  Raymond  Robins,  "who 
never  think  of  spending  money  for  carfare  or  lunches 
or  laundry  or  outings,  and  never  dream  of  earning 
enough  to  make  life  even  half-way  decent  and  com- 
fortable or  giving  a  chance  for  any  realization  of  aspir- 
ation or  ideals  or  education,  and  yet  these  girls  by  the 
tens  of  thousands,  in  the  face  of  such  constant  denial 
of  all  that  makes  life  worth  while  have  held  their 
womanhood  intact  and  protected  its  integrity.  To  the 
courage,  the  grit,  the  fineness  of  character  all  can  tes- 
tify who  know  intimately  the  daily  life  of  working 
girls.  But  well  may  we  question  the  civilization,  the 
democracy,  the  Christianity,  of  a  community  tolerating 
such  conditions." 

And  what  will  be  the  social  result  if  the  woman  is 
not  allowed  full  freedom  to  find  her  larger  life  in 
organized  relationship  with  her  f ellow- workers  ?  There 
can  be  but  two  possible  outcomes  to  a  denial  of  that 
sort  under  any  conditions ;  the  first  is  that  a  race  of 
slaves  will  be  bred ;  already  a  certain  section  of  the 


IN    CITY   INDUSTRIES  65 

working  population  bitterly  refers  to  its  condition  as 
wage-slavery.  The  end  of  that  is  not  only  ruin  for 
the  slave  but  like  ruin  for  the  master.  For  no  man 
and  no  group  of  men  can  become  masters  of  the  life 
and  destiny  of  their  fellows  without  destroying  the 
very  democratic  liberties  which  they  themselves  hold 
dear.  The  other  outcome,  and  the  more  probable  one 
in  a  civilization  as  far  advanced  as  ours,  is  that  the 
workers  will  rise  in  rebellion,  and  buy  with  their  blood 
that  freedom  for  which  people  always  and  everywhere 
have  been  willing  to  sacrifice  their  lives.  Such  a  con- 
dition need  not  come.  But  unless  at  this  point  a 
Christian  civilization  recognizes  the  justice  of  the 
demand  of  a  large  section  of  its  population  for  liberty 
and  freedom  in  their  industrial  relations,  it  is  not 
impossible  that  it  may  come. 

The  Campaign  for  Freedom 

It  was  a  new  day  in  American  law-making  when  the 
National  Consumers'  League  led  the  fight  before  the 
Oregon  Supreme  Court  for  the  shorter  work  day  for 
women.  For  all  its  effort  was  based  upon  the  facts 
concerning  the  need  of  the  women  rather  than  upon 
the  precedents  in  the  law  books.  Strange  testimony 
was  presented  in  that  case — evidence  from  social 
workers,  from  economists,  from  factory  inspectors, 
from  physicians,  all  showing  beyond  any  doubt  the 
evil  effect  of  long  hours  upon  health,  mentality  and 
morals.  And  the  case  was  won.  No  fear  of  uncon- 
stitutionality now  impedes  the  progress  of  states  on 
this  measure.     The  field  is  clear  for  work  in  every 


66  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

state  where  women  still  lack  the  legal  protection  of 
an  eight-hour  day. 

The  fight  will  not  be  easy.  Whenever  a  campaign 
is  on  for  the  shorter  work  day  for  women,  all  the  forces 
of  reaction  can  be  counted  upon  to  oppose  it.  In 
Maine,  for  example,  when  the  campaign  was  on  for  a 
54-hour  week  for  women  and  minors,  the  measure  was 
opposed  by  a  body  calling  itself  the  Maine  Industrial 
Expansion  Commission.  The  identity  of  the  leaders 
of  this  commission  was  carefully  concealed,  but  the 
popular  belief  was  that  the  textile  interests  were  the 
sponsors.  At  any  rate,  the  commission  flooded  the 
state  with  circulars  describing  the  calamity  which 
would  befall  the  state's  industrial  interest  if  the  law 
should  be  passed,  and  stating  that  manufacturers  were 
coming  into  Maine  from  other  localities  in  order  to 
avoid  complying  with  the  requirements  for  shorter 
hours.  If  Maine  joined  the  other  states,  the  manu- 
facturers would  be  left  without  refuge.  Last  year  in 
Massachusetts,  the  textile  interests  bitterly  opposed 
the  campaign  for  the  eight-hour  day  for  women.  The 
same  stories  were  current  which  have  been  heard  these 
fifty  years  and  more  when  labor  legislation  has  been 
attempted.  Manufacturers  would  be  driven  away  from 
the  state ;  wages  would  drop  to  a  lower  level ;  women 
would  be  replaced  by  men ;  production  would  be  low- 
ered and  thus  cause  an  undue  hardship  to  the  em- 
ployers. In  one  such  campaign  a  manufacturer 
asserted  that  if  the  law  should  be  passed  he  would 
have  to  leave  the  world.  But  the  law  was  passed,  and 
those  who  conducted  the  fight  testify  that  the  manu- 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  67 

facturer  did  not  have  to  "leave  the  world"  or  even  the 
state,  and  that  he  is  still  making  a  sufficient  income 
to  support  himself  and  his  dependents  in  much  more 
than  "frugal  decency." 

Minimum  Wage  Law 

The  next  great  campaign  led  by  this  league  was  the 
fight  for  the  Minimum  Wage  Law.  The  constitution- 
ality of  minimum  wage  legislation  has  also  now  been 
upheld  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States. 
Twelve  states  now  have  some  form  of  the  minimum 
wage  law,  and  its  benefits  are  already  apparent  from 
investigations  which  have  been  made  into  its  work- 
ings. None  of  the  fears  expressed  by  the  employers, 
by  some  of  the  organized  laboring  men  and  by  others 
who  were  honestly  afraid  of  the  results,  have  been 
supported  by  the  facts.  All  available  evidence  indi- 
cates that  it  works  only  benefit  and  that  none  of  the 
disasters  predicted  occur. 

These  campaigns  have  established  the  constitution- 
ality of  laws  regulating  the  employment  of  women. 
Every  state  may  now  proceed  with  making  protective 
laws  for  women  unimpeded  by  the  fear  that  all  its  work 
will  be  overturned  by  an  adverse  decision  by  the 
United  States  Supreme  Court.  It  is  established  that 
the  welfare  of  society  demands  this  legislative  protec- 
tion.    We  may  now  move  forward  faster. 

The  working  women  themselves  have  given  valiant 
service  in  the  campaign.  The  National  Women's 
Trade  Union  League  organized  in   1903  has  worked 


68  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

hand  in  hand  with  the  National  Consumers'  League. 
These  organized  working  women  have  added  their  in- 
dustrial power  to  the  political  effort  made  by  their 
friends.  In  the  states  where  public  opinion  has  been 
too  laggard  and  indifferent  to  secure  the  eight-hour 
day  the  women  themselves  in  certain  establishments 
have  gained  it  either  through  strikes  or  threats  of 
strikes.  What  a  commentary  upon  a  Christian  civil- 
ization, that  a  body  of  women,  upon  whose  labor  the 
whole  community  is  dependent,  must  enforce  its 
demands  for  a  reasonable  working  day  by  dropping 
work  and  undergoing  untold  hardships  through  loss  of 
wages,  public  disapprobation,  oftentimes  the  loss  of 
any  employment  altogether  and  the  necessary  hard  re- 
adjustment to  new  conditions ! 

Women  have  won  for  themselves,  in  this  way  and 
through  popular  education  of  the  community,  many  sub- 
stantial gains.  Wherever  women  are  organized  into 
unions,  better  conditions  are  apparent.  One  of  the 
most  thrilling  moments  in  the  recent  history  of  trade- 
union  organization  among  women  in  this  country  was 
when  at  the  national  convention  of  the  league,  a  year 
or  two  ago,  a  white-haired  woman  rose  to  tell  of  her 
success  in  organizing  the  scrubwomen  of  the  down- 
town districts  of  Boston.  The  scrubwomen,  old  and 
wrinkled,  with  hands  hardened  by  rough  toil,  working 
long  hours  and  far  into  the  night,  receiving  less  for 
their  labor  than  men  who  were  doing  the  same  work, 
and  often  supporting  their  children  by  their  toil,  these 
women,  through  the  trade-union  movement  had  caught 
a  glimmer  of  hope.     Their  modest  organization  had 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  69 

already  secured  higher  wages  for  them.  Meeting  in 
their  own  councils,  they  at  last  were  stirred  by  a 
glimpse  of  industrial  freedom ;  a  new  kingdom  of  self- 
respect  and  citizenship  had  opened  up  to  them. 

Popular  demand  among  enlightened  citizens  every- 
where is  adding  power  to  the  campaign.  Many  em- 
ployers who  are  convinced  not  only  of  the  benefit  to 
the  community  but  of  the  benefits  to  their  business 
are  helping  rather  than  opposing.  It  remains  for  the 
church  women  to  add  their  organized  strength  to  the 
movement. 

What  is  the  Goal? 

What  is  the  hope  of  the  immediate  future?  What 
goal  have  the  friends  of  the  wage-earning  women 
and  children  set  themselves  as  the  next  steps  in  their 
campaign? 

A  brief  review  of  the  standards  which  they  have 
set  up  will  serve  as  a  measuring  rod  for  every  com- 
munity. 

Here  is  the  present  aim : 

Boys  under  14  and  girls  under  18  must  be  kept  out 
of  the  street  trades. 

Require  a  permit  from  the  superintendent  of 
schools  for  boys  under  16  who  desire  to  go  to  work, 
and  prohibit  them  from  working  at  night. 

Allow  no  boys  under  16  to  enter  dangerous  occupa- 
tions. 

Make  no  exemptions  for  boys  under  14  who  desire 
to  engage  in  gainful  occupations  of  any  kind. 

Prohibit  boys  under   18  from   working  more   than 


70  THE    PATH    OF   LABOR 

eight  hours  a  day  and  allow  no  boys  under  21  to 
engage  in  night  messenger  service. 

A  standard  like  this  can  be  enforced  much  more 
carefully  and  successfully  if  the  community  will  pro- 
vide safeguards  so  that  children  will  not  lightly  leave 
school  to  go  to  work.  Work  permits  should  be  re- 
quired of  all  children  under  18,  indicating  that  at  least 
six  grades  of  school  have  been  completed,  and  that 
an  employer  has  promised  work  and  will  report  back 
to  the  officer  who  issues  the  permit  as  soon  as  the 
child  leaves  his  establishment. 

The  second  point  of  attack  is  from  the  angle  of  the 
school  laws.  No  exemption  from  school  should  be 
permitted  for  children  under  18  unless  they  are  shown 
to  have  permission  from  the  proper  authorities  to 
engage  in  wage-earning  occupations,  and  are  above 
the  age  limit  set  by  the  law.  Even  those  under  18 
who  are  at  work  should  be  required  to  attend  daytime 
continuation  schools  at  least  six  hours  each  week, 
until  they  have  completed  eight  or  more  grades  of 
schooling. 

The  mothers'  pension  law  of  the  state  should  sup- 
plement the  school  law  and  be  so  drawn  that  it  gives 
aid  to  the  mother  until  the  time  the  state  law  allows 
the  child  to  go  to  work. 

Here  are  the  terms  of  that  minimum  amount  of  life 
which  we  at  present  contemplate  for  the  children. 
Will  any  Christian  say  that  we  dare  stop  there? 
Those  who  follow  a  Master  who  proclaimed  children 
to  be  the  stuff  of  a  new  Kingdom  can  never  be  satis- 
fied with  this  meagre  standard.     They  must  work  un- 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  71 

ceasingly  until  every  child  has  his  full  share  of  that 
development  which  will  in  time  make  possible  a  new 
earth. 

The  women  who  have  organized  themselves  into 
trade  unions  under  the  leadership  of  the  National 
Women's  Trade  Union  League  have  set  up  for  them- 
selves the  following  goal : 

Organization  of  all  working  women  into  trade  unions. 
The  eight-hour  day. 
A  minimum  wage  scale. 
Equal  pay  for  equal  work. 
Full  citizenship  for  women. 

It  is  a  modest  demand.  Its  reasonableness  is  the 
more  apparent  when  this  standard  is  compared  with 
the  demands  made  by  the  Christian  churches  upon 
modern  industry  through  their  Social  Creed : 

The  right  of  employees  and  employers  alike  to  organize. 

Release  from  employment  one  day  in  seven. 

The  gradual  and  reasonable  reduction  of  the  hours  of 
labor  to  the  lowest  practicable  point,  and  for  that  degree  of 
leisure  for  all  which  is  a  condition  of  the  highest  human  life. 

A  living  wage  in  every  industry  and  the  highest  wage  that 
each  industry  can  afford ;  and  the  most  equitable  division  of 
the  product  of  industry  that  can  ultimately  be  devised. 

The  organized  church  women  and  organized  wage- 
earning  women  have  therefore  a  common  goal.  They 
need  to  join  hands  for  its  accomplishment. 

New  Opportunities 

From  the  earliest  times  Christian  women  have  found 
their  ministry  among  the  needy  of  the  world.  Among 
the  poor,  the  sick,  the  strangers  and  the  friendless 
they  have  gone  with  deeds  of  mercy  and  missions  of 
kindness.     The   modern   home   missionary   movement 


"J 2  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

has  followed  people  into  their  homes;  if  those  homes 
were  set  up  across  the  mountains  and  deserts  of  a  new 
country,  the  Christian  womanhood  of  the  nation  has 
followed  them  there.  If  the  homes  were  in  the 
crowded  sections  of  great  cities,  and  if  they  housed 
strangers  from  other  lands,  there,  too,  the  women  have 
sought  to  carry  their  ministries  of  Christian  com- 
passion. 

And  now,  if  church  women  would  still  follow  people 
out  from  their  homes  with  the  Christian  ideal,  they 
must  follow  them  as  they  move  out  into  a  different 
world,  the  World  of  Industry.  It  is  a  new  world.  It 
is  a  ruthless  world.  If  the  Christian  womanhood  of 
America  is  not  able  to  follow  the  women  and  children 
as  they  go  out  from  the  shelter  of  their  homes  into 
this  developing  world,  what  hope  is  there  that  this 
new  world  will  ever  be  under  the  sway  of  the  Christian 
ideal? 

The  call  sounds  clearly.  Here  are  children  in  untold 
numbers  who  may  never  come  under  the  influence  of  a 
kindergarten,  a  Sunday-school,  a  mission  school  or  a 
Christian  college.  They  are  beyond  the  reach  of  all  the 
institutions  which  we  have  set  up.  Is  not  the  call  then 
to  follow  them  to  the  streets,  to  the  shops  and  stores 
and  factories,  and  to  work  for  them  in  new  ways  and 
by  new  methods?  Must  we  not  join  hands  with  those 
who  are  already  crusading  for  the  children,  and  lend 
the  power  of  our  organized  Christian  idealism  to  the 
campaign  ? 

Every  local  community  furnishes  a  field,  every  store 


IN   CITY   INDUSTRIES  73 

where  a  boy  or  a  girl  works  too  many  hours  is  a  chal- 
lenge to  the  Christian  womanhood  of  that  community ; 
every  town  where  a  boy  or  a  girl  works  on  the  streets 
is  a  direct  bid  for  the  influence  of  Christian  women; 
every  factory  where  a  child  works  for  the  good  of  the 
owner  or  for  a  shortsighted  parent  instead  of  for  his 
own  development  is  an  affront  to  a  Christian  con- 
science. There  is  not  a  village,  not  a  town,  not  a  city, 
and  scarcely  a  suburb  where  all  the  child  life  of  the 
community  is  held  in  sacred  trust  for  the  future.  Could 
there  be  a  louder  or  a  clearer  call  to  women  who  have 
long  followed  new  calls  and  walked  over  hard  places  in 
fulfilling  their  Christian  mission? 

The  organized  wage-earning  women  likewise  are 
waiting  for  the  time  to  come  when  their  more  fortu- 
nate sisters  in  the  churches  will  extend  a  hand  to  them 
in  their  bitter  struggle.  Wherever  individual  church 
women  have  entered  into  that  struggle  and  made  it 
their  own,  they  have  been  able  to  put  strength  and 
courage  into  the  women  who  were  bearing  the  brunt 
of  it.  There  are  heartening  examples  all  over  the 
country  of  individual  women  who  have  gone  from  the 
churches  to  assist  in  this  battle.  What  might  not  be  done, 
if  the  organized  power  of  Christian  womanhood  were 
massed  behind  the  attack  upon  the  evils  from  which 
these  women  suffer? 

How  the  church  women  may  help  in  each  com- 
munity, just  where  they  will  step  into  line  and  lend 
their  aid  will  be  determined  by  the  conditions  already 
existing  there. 

What  are  the  state  laws,  and  what  are  the  city  ordi- 


74  THE    PATH    OF    LABOR 

nances?  Under  what  conditions  do  children  work  on 
the  streets  and  in  the  stores?  Do  the  people  of  the 
community  understand  that  work  for  children  is 
usually  wholly  unnecessary?  That  in  only  a  minimum 
number  of  cases  where  studies  have  been  made  has  it 
been  found  that  poverty  was  the  compelling  cause  for 
the  street  work  of  children?  Do  they  realize  that 
work  in  stores  and  other  local  establishments  is  almost 
as  dangerous  to  health  and  morals  as  work  in  factories 
and  mines? 

What  about  school  regulations?  Does  the  state 
require  a  specific  amount  of  education  before  it  allows 
children  to  go  to  work?  Does  it  make  any  provision 
for  further  education  after  children  have  entered  into 
paid  occupations?  Does  the  state  follow  these  chil- 
dren with  any  kind  of  medical  inspection  or  care,  and 
is  anybody  interested  in  seeing  whether  they  have  a 
maximum  amount  of  opportunity  for  advancement? 

Quite  as  important  as  getting  the  laws,  is  the  matter 
of  getting  them  enforced.  To  pass  laws  without  pro- 
viding the  machinery  for  their  enforcement  is  useless. 
In  many  states  where  laws  have  with  great  difficulty 
been  passed  to  protect  the  children,  they  are  almost 
valueless  because  they  are  not  adequately  enforced. 
One  inspector  for  a  whole  state,  for  example,  cannot 
possibly  see  that  the  law  is  being  enforced,  and  the 
law  might  almost  as  well  not  exist.  In  still  other 
cases,  where  there  is  an  adequate  force  of  inspectors, 
the  law  is  a  farce  because  the  courts  will  not  convict 
powerful  employers.  In  Ohio,  for  example,  last  year 
115  prosecutions  were  instituted  in  three  months  for 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  75 

violation  of  the  laws  relating  to  women  and  children, 
and  72  per  cent,  were  either  suspended  or  remitted. 

What  is  lacking  here  is  a  community  consciousness 
of  the  folly  of  such  conditions.  There  is  no  other 
agency  so  powerfully  and  adequately  equipped  as  the 
Christian  church  to  bring  home  to  a  careless  and  indif- 
ferent public  the  sin  of  contempt  for  the  laws  which 
the  common  conscience  has  approved  as  necessary  for 
the  common  welfare.  Women  of  the  church  have  an 
especial  obligation  and  opportunity  to  cry  out  against 
such  injustices  until  no  court  will  dare  to  allow  such 
contemptuous  disregard  of  the  law. 

The  Present  Needs 

For  the  children  the  outstanding  needs  are : 

1.  Community  recognition  of  the  needs  of  children 
in  local  establishments  and  on  the  streets. 

2.  Compulsory  education  laws  which  will  require  a 
certain  standard  of  education  before  a  child  is  allowed 
to  go  to  work,  and  provision  for  further  education  and 
training  after  he  has  left  school  for  a  gainful  occupa- 
tion. 

3.  Medical  inspection  of  children,  with  more  rigid 
health  requirements  before  they  are  allowed  to  begin 
work,  and  recurring  inspections  thereafter  to  see  that 
the  new  work  is  not  destructive  to  their  health. 

Among  the  women  the  outstanding  needs  are: 

1.  A  Federal  law  giving  the  eight-hour  day. 

2.  Minimum  wage  legislation  in  every  state. 


76  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

3.  A  separate  bureau  for  women  under  the  Federal 
Department  of  Labor. 

Many  campaigns  will  be  carried  through  before  these 
needs  are  met.  Will  the  women  of  the  churches  be 
ready  to  lend  their  assistance  as  one  effort  after  an- 
other shall  be  made  to  reach  the  goals  set  up? 

Making  a  Beginning 

Here  and  there  are  groups  of  church  women  who 
have  felt  upon  their  conscience  the  pressure  of  these 
industrial  conditions.  They  are  feeling  that  they  must 
align  themselves  definitely  for  an  organized  attack 
upon  the  un-Christian  conditions  which  are  menacing 
the  lives  of  other  women  and  of  countless  little  chil- 
dren. Individual  women  are  giving  expression  to 
their  feeling  of  obligation,  and  their  sense  of  shame  at 
profiting  by  the  labor  of  these  weaker  ones,  with  no 
attempt  made  to  lighten  their  burden,  to  protect  them 
from  the  heartless  exploitations  of  careless  employers 
and  an  indifferent  public. 

The  most  notable  example  of  activity  in  this  field 
by  church  women  is  that  furnished  by  the  Chicago 
Church  Woman's  Federation.  A  committee  was  ap- 
pointed by  this  body  to  "follow  labor  developments, 
especially  where  women  and  child  labor  are  involved, 
to  ascertain  the  efforts  for  bettering  conditions  which 
are  being  made  by  the  National  Child  Labor  Com- 
mittee, the  Women's  Trade  Union  League,  etc.,  and 
to  suggest  means  by  which  the  federation  may  co- 
operate with  these  groups  or  may  take  the  initiative  in 
an  effort  for  social  justice." 


IN    CITY    INDUSTRIES  77 

The  first  venture  of  the  new  committee  was  to  send 
delegates  to  a  conference  called  by  the  National  Con- 
sumers' League  and  the  Women's  Trade  Union 
League  to  launch  a  campaign  for  a  Federal  eight-hour 
day  for  women.  The  outcome  was  a  resolution  by  the 
body  in  favor  of  such  legislation  and  a  recommenda- 
tion that  the  active  support  of  the  organization  be 
given. 

Not  long  after,  a  serious  strike  broke  out  among  the 
garment  workers  of  the  city.  At  first  it  seemed  to  the 
church  women  that  they  must  keep  their  hands  off  the 
situation ;  inexperienced  in  labor  matters,  fearing  to 
cause  division  in  their  ranks,  it  seemed  impossible  to 
do  anything.  But  as  the  strike  progressed  and  the 
needs  of  the  girls  became  acute,  the  injustices  of  their 
situation  were  brought  clearly  before  the  public  mind, 
and  "common  human  decency  put  inaction  to  shame,"  to 
use  the  words  of  the  chairman  of  the  Labor  Commit- 
tee. A  friend  of  the  strikers  told  in  simple  but  graphic 
terms  of  brutal  arrests,  of  weak  and  hungry  girls  need- 
ing the  help  of  the  more  privileged.  The  news  letter 
of  the  society  called  to  action.  The  women  began  to 
distribute  cards  in  the  churches  calling  for  help  for  the 
strikers ;  from  that  they  went  on  to  furnishing  speakers 
for  strike  meetings ;  to  testifying  in  court  when  girls 
were  arrested  without  cause;  to  visiting  the  shops  to 
verify  the  contention  of  the  strikers  that  inadequate 
bookkeeping  made  it  impossible  to  determine  what  the 
average  wages  were  without  a  scientific  investigation ; 
and  finally,  together  with  a  committee  from  the  min- 
isterial bodies  of  the  city,  they  called  a  meeting  of 


78  THE   PATH   OF  LABOR 

strikers  and  employers  to  discuss  the  situation  in  the 
presence  of  representative  citizens.  At  the  present 
time  they  are  bravely  attempting  to  get  a  stable  agree- 
ment between  employers  and  employed  by  which  such 
disastrous  strikes  may  in  the  future  be  avoided. 
Meantime,  an  exhibit  of  labelled  goods,  showing  what 
it  means  to  the  workers  and  to  the  public  to  have  cloth- 
ing made  under  sanitary  conditions,  has  been  pro- 
moted, the  Church  Women  co-operating  with  the 
National  Consumers'  League  and  making  room  for  the 
exhibit  in  their  own  offices. 

That  the  efforts  of  these  church  women  have  given 
new  hope  to  the  workers  is  apparent  in  a  recent  inci- 
dent. Not  far  from  Chicago  a  new  munitions  plant  has 
been  built.  Scores  of  girls  from  Chicago  went  to 
work  in  the  plant.  They  found  unspeakable  condi- 
tions; ten-hour  shifts,  night  work,  low  wages,  bad 
transportation,  and  no  decent  provision  for  housing. 
The  community  provided  no  recreation  whatever  for 
the  factory  women ;  feeling  was  keen  in  the  conservative 
old  town  that  the  factory  girls  were  not  decent  and 
not  fit  to  be  admitted  to  the  homes  or  to  the  social  life 
of  the  town.  Then  the  workers  thought  of  their 
friends  in  the  churches  and  appealed  to  them  for  help. 
They  wanted  to  know  if  it  would  not  be  possible  for 
the  church  women  to  take  up  the  matter  of  community 
conditions  and  to  put  in  a  social-service  worker.  Says 
a  member  of  the  Labor  Committee,  "Now  I  feel  that 
that  is  significant — their  thinking  of  the  church  at  all 
in  this  connection." 


IN   CITY   INDUSTRIES  79 

Is  it  significant?  Does  it  forecast  the  day  when  the 
more  privileged  women  in  the  churches  will  turn  to 
these  less  fortunate  ones  and  wage  the  battle  for  their 
emancipation?  Does  it  mean  that  here  is  opening  up 
the  next  call  to  Christian  service,  the  next  great  adven- 
ture to  be  undertaken  for  the  Kingdom  ? 


Ill 

IN  MOUNTAINS  AND  MILLS 

JOHN  EDWARDS   CALFEE 
ALEXANDER  JEFFREY  McKELWAY 


In  his  hand  are  the  deep  places  of  the  earth,  the  strength  of 
the  hills  is  his  also. — Psa.  95  :  4. 

And  I  will  make  all  my  mountains  a  way,  and  my  highways 
shall  be  exalted. — Isaiah  49:11. 

If  thou  take  away  from  the  midst  of  thee  the  yoke,  the  putting 
forth  of  the  finger,  and  speaking  vanity; 

And  if  thou  draw  out  thy  soul  to  the  hungry,  and  satisfy  the 
afflicted  soul :  then  shall  thy  light  rise  in  obscurity,  and  thy  dark- 
ness be  as  the  noon  day. 

And  they  that  shall  be  of  thee  shall  build  the  old  waste  places : 
thou  shalt  raise  up  the  foundations  of  many  generations ;  and 
thou  shalt  be  called,  The  repairer  of  the  breach,  The  restorer  of 
paths  to  dwell  in.— Isaiah  58:  9-10,  12. 

For  there  are  men  in  these  mountains  as  well  as  minerals,  and 
industry  digs  them  out  to  separate  them,  and  to  transform  those 
who  are  fit  unto  better  things.  But  industry  does  not  care  for 
the  poor,  the  weak,  the  handicapped.  God  does ;  and  in  His 
behalf  Christianity  sends  forth  its  appeal  for  practical  Cnristian 
help  and  sympathy  with  the  mountaineer. 

H.  Paul  Douglass. 


Ill 

IN  MOUNTAINS  AND  MILLS 
JOHN  EDWARDS  CALFEE 

Mountaineers 

If  we  are  to  understand  the  mountain  people  we 
must  know  their  ancestry,  their  mentality,  their  spirit- 
ual inheritances,  their  ideals,  their  capacity  for  devel- 
opment, and  their  means  for  satisfying  their  souls' 
desires.  It  is  grossly  unfair  to  judge  a  people  by  their 
accomplishments  without  some  inventory  of  the  avail- 
able means  of  attainment  which  are  within  their  reach. 

That  we  may  have  this  understanding  we  must  go 
back  to  the  opening  year  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
To  be  exact  and  at  the  same  time  personal,  King  James 
I.  in  the  year  1607  confiscated  the  estates  of  the  native 
Irish  from  six  counties  of  Ulster  and  replanted  these 
estates  with  Scotch  and  English  Presbyterians.  They 
were  aliens  in  blood,  ideals  and  religion  to  the  Irish, 
being  looked  upon  as  usurpers — all  of  which  led  to 
many  bloody  battles.  When  the  leases  expired  the 
church  people  and  the  Crown  had  a  falling  out;  the 
prosecutions  of  the  Crown  set  the  former  to  immigrat- 
ing to  lands  of  larger  freedom.  Horace  Kephart  has 
estimated  this  exodus  to  include  fully  thirty  thousand 

83 


84  THE   PATH   OF   LABOR 

people  during  a  two-year  period ;  many  ultimately  find- 
ing a  home  in  America  along  what  was,  at  that  time, 
the  westernmost  frontier.  Trained  in  the  willingness 
to  take  care  of  themselves,  schooled  in  fighting,  con- 
firmed, as  Justin  Winsor  says,  "in  the  belief  of  original 
sin,  total  depravity,  predestination  and  election,"  and 
"seeing  no  use  in  an  Indian  but  to  be  a  target  for  their 
bullets,"  they  found  a  rare  opportunity  for  some  excit- 
ing fighting.  These  people  of  Scotch-Irish  descent, 
now  known  as  Mountaineers,  have  taken  several  post- 
graduate courses  in  the  art  of  war.  Besides  fighting 
with  the  Indians,  they  have  fought  the  British,  the 
Mexicans,  and  during  dull  seasons  have  fought  each 
other.  The  mountain  feud  is  the  vermiform  appendix 
of  bygone  times  which  has  rootage  back  in  the  dark 
ages  of  mediaevalism.  Tradition,  habit  of  mind  and 
manner  of  living  qualified  these  pioneering  people  for 
their  future  homes  in  the  mountains  of  what  is  now 
generally  known  as  Appalachian  America. 

The  Highlander  has  always  been  a  Bible  protestant, 
a  hater  of  slavery,  a  firm  believer  in  natural  justice  and 
slow  to  recognize  any  authority,  other  than  that  which 
is  based  upon  real  merit  and  personal  worth.  He  is 
an  extreme  individualist,  a  devotee  to  personal  valor, 
and  finds  co-operation  a  most  difficult  lesson  to  learn. 

Where  Do  the  Mountaineers  Live? 

Next  in  importance  to  the  blood  of  any  people  is 
their  home — the  environment,  natural  resources  and 
location  with  reference  to  the  well-beaten  paths  of 
progress  and  civilization.     The  Mountaineers  occupy 


IN    MOUNTAINS   AND    MILLS  85 

the  mountain  ends  of  eight  adjoining  states.  To  this 
fact  may  be  due  much  of  the  retardation  in  their  devel- 
opment. The  numerous  6tate  boundary  fences  have 
kept  apart  a  people  who  are  naturally  homogeneous  in 
speech,  manners,  customs  and  ideals  and  thus  has  been 
prevented  that  coherence  which  is  fundamental  to  race 
consciousness,  a  condition  quite  essential  to  the  devel- 
opment of  strong  leadership.  They  have  been  taken 
into  the  councils  of  the  state  too  little  except  by  sheer 
force  of  superior  individual  ability.  A  strong,  wise, 
foresighted  native  leadership  is  an  imperative  need  of 
those  who  are  remote  from  centers  of  population. 

The  Highlanders'  misfortune  has  been  that  of  being 
stranded  far  out  of  the  course  of  the  well-beaten  paths 
of  progress,  which  have  detoured  to  the  north  and 
south  of  the  rugged  mountains.  The  combined  area 
of  the  Mountaineers'  land  is  about  twice  the  size  of  the 
New  England  States.  It  has  been  estimated  that  from 
85  to  90  per  cent,  of  it  is  on  mountain  slopes,  with  70 
per  cent.,  or  more,  steeper  than  a  rise  of  one  foot  to 
every  five.  What  was  once  a  good  home  in  pioneering 
days  when  the  population  was  sparse,  hunting  good, 
the  methods  of  living  and  farming  primitive,  and  when 
men  and  women  fought  the  forces  of  nature  with  their 
wits  and  their  bare  hands,  has  been  changed.  The 
transformation  has  come  about  in  the  most  natural 
way  in  the  world  ;  the  yearly  increasing  population  has 
pressed  harder  upon  the  limits  of  subsistence  until  that 
pressure  has  become  so  fierce  in  the  extremely  rugged 
sections  that  the  land  has  been  called  by  one  writer 
"The  Land  of  Do  Without." 


86  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

Two  Classes  of  Rural  Mountain  People 

The  Land  of  Do  Without  lies  back  of  the  Land  of 
Enough.  The  inhabitants  differ  from  each  other  in 
geographical  position  and  personal  possessions,  more 
than  in  social  or  inherent  qualities.  The  difference,  if 
written  in  one  word,  would  be  the  word  "Opportunity." 
The  early  settlers  naturally  occupied  the  high,  broad, 
rich  river  valleys.  The  mathematical  propensity  of 
the  mountain  people  to  be  good  at  multiplication  soon 
filled  the  land  of  first  choice,  then  the  movement  was 
started  for  the  valleys,  coves,  hillsides,  etc.  The  first 
class  of  this  social  stratum  of  mountain  folk  has  good 
homes  and  conveniences,  such  as  are  found  upon  the 
average  good  farm.  The  other  group,  at  the  head  of 
long  narrow  creeks  and  upon  the  steep  mountain  sides, 
are  those  about  whom  there  should  be  much  sympa- 
thetic concern.  These  people  are  the  real  citizens  of 
the  Land  of  Do  Without.  They  are  known  for  the 
isolation  and  solitude  of  their  homes  and  the  many 
things  which  they  do  not  have;  many  of  which  they 
have  never  even  seen.  More  than  this,  they  are  known 
for  the  stoical  way  in  which  they  bear  their  hard- 
ships, some  of  these  being  unsatisfied  soul  desires 
which  burn  deep  down  into  the  heart. 

Home  Life 

The  typical  mountain  home  is  the  log  cabin  of  our 
forefathers.  The  house  has  few  rooms — a  main  room, 
and  a  lean-to  quite  often,  but  seldom  does  it  contain 
more  than  three  or  four  rooms.  In  the  more  remote 
sections  the  fireplace  still  has  the  preference  over  the 


IN    MOUNTAINS   AND    MILLS  87 

stove  for  the  very  good  reason  given  me  by  a  woman 
who  said,  "Why,  I  can  cook  and  warm  at  the  same 
time  by  a  fireplace !"  Cooking  utensils  are  few,  the 
pot  and  the  skillet  being  the  standbys.  The  food  is 
too  often  poorly  prepared  and  without  variety,  con- 
sisting in  main  of  corn  pone  and  fat  meat,  with  the 
addition  of  beans,  onions  and  cabbage  during  the 
growing  season.  Pictures  and  books  are  as  scarce  as 
the  other  necessities  of  life.  We  look  in  vain  for  the 
familiar  and  inspiring  face  of  the  Boy  Jesus,  neither  do 
we  find  any  of  our  national  heroes  alive  in  either  pic- 
ture or  book  to  inspire  to  character  formation.  This 
is  indeed  the  Land  of  Do  Without. 

The  boys  and  girls  marry  young  and  rear  large 
families.  A  mother  of  fifteen  is  no  uncommon  occur- 
rence, but  a  very  high  rate  of  infant  mortality  prevails, 
owing  to  the  restricted  diet,  poorly  prepared  food  and 
lack  of  knowledge  of  the  simplest  laws  of  health, 
hygiene  and  sanitation. 

The  bonds  of  home  ties  are  wonderfully  strong,  in 
fact  the  Mountaineers'  loyalty  is  measured  by  ties  of 
blood.  He  never  fails  in  hospitality  and  loyalty  to 
friends  and  kinsfolk.  It  is  extremely  difficult  to  per- 
suade parents  of  feeble-minded  or  epileptic  children  to 
give  them  up  to  the  care  of  state  institutions.  They 
prefer  to  keep  them  at  home,  feeling  that  any  other 
course  would  be  infidelity  to  family  love  and  devotion. 
Parents  are  super-indulgent  in  dealing  with  their  chil- 
dren. It  is  a  common  thing  for  a  parent  to  account 
for  a  child's  misdeeds  by  saying,  "He  just  would  be  to 
do  it,"  or  that  "His  mother  was  a  Smith,  and  nobody 


88  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

never  could  make  a  Smith  do  nothing  he  didn't  want 
to  do."  The  mother,  gaunt  and  overworked  and  silent 
as  she  may  be,  is  the  center  of  the  home.  Her  duties 
are  many  and  varied.  Besides  giving  birth  to  a  large 
family,  and  attending  to  the  household  duties,  she 
invariably  cares  for  the  chickens  and  milks  the  cow, 
carries  the  water  and  often  splits  the  wood;  then  she  is 
expected  to  be  both  ready  and  willing  to  give  a  lift  in 
the  corn  field  with  the  hoe,  or  to  have  a  hand  in 
making  of  molasses  and  saving  the  fodder.  The 
father  is  inconsiderate,  but  rarely  unkind  to  either 
mother  or  children ;  he  retains  his  forefathers'  love  of 
hunting  and  fishing  and  his  prowess  with  a  gun  is  a 
never  failing  source  of  joy.  In  his  necessary  trips 
down  the  creek  to  the  store,  or  to  the  county  seat  on 
court  day,  he  comes  in  contact  with  fellowmen — hence 
broadens  his  field  of  vision  and  lessens  the  dull 
monotony. 

In  the  majority  of  cases  it  is  the  mother  who  longs 
for  better  things  and  greater  opportunities  for  her  boys 
and  girls  than  she  has  herself  had.  A  prominent  edu- 
cator who  has  spent  his  life  in  the  mountains  says, 
"I  have  yet  to  see  illiterate  children  of  a  literate 
mother ;  but,  have  found  many,  many  cases  of  illiterate 
children  of  a  literate  father."  This  one  truth  impresses 
the  great  need  of  seeking  out  and  educating  the  future 
mothers  of  American  citizens. 

Religious  Life 

The  Mountaineers  are  strongly  Protestant.  They 
have  inherited  the  beliefs  of  their  grandsires  and  their 


IN    MOUNTAINS   AND   MILLS  89 

isolation  has  kept  them  in  the  same  narrow  paths. 
The  writer,  during  all  his  travels  throughout  the  moun- 
tain regions,  has  never  met  a  professed  infidel.  They 
are  over-fond  of  arguing  upon  religious  subjects.  Ser- 
mons are  usually  doctrinal,  especially  if  there  be 
brethren  of  a  different  faith  at  hand  with  whom  a  con- 
troversy may  be  provoked.  Church  houses,  as  they 
are  always  called,  are  few  and  rarely  attractive  either 
within  or  without.  There  are  whole  counties  without 
one  good  church  building  outside  the  county  seat. 
Thousands  of  people  do  not  hear  on  an  average  two 
sermons  a  year.  The  Sunday-schools  are  more  numer- 
ous, and  are  usually  held  in  the  school  house.  They 
start  with  the  beginning  of  good  weather  in  the  sum- 
mer and  suspend  operations  during  the  long  winter 
months.  They  are  in  many  cases  organized  by  young 
folks  of  the  community  who  have  been  away  at  school 
during  the  year  and  have  felt  the  need  of  uplift  for  the 
ones  at  home.  In  cases  where  the  Sunday-school  lives 
throughout  the  year,  the  credit  is  almost  invariably 
due  to  one  of  these  returned  young  people,  now  the 
district  school  teacher,  who  has  caught  the  vision. 

Schools 

The  public  schools  are  of  short  duration,  running 
from  four  and  a  half  to  seven  months  a  year.  The 
school  buildings  are  in  many  cases  extremely  poor 
with  little  equipment  for  teaching  purposes.  The 
attendance  is  irregular  because  the  roads  are  bad,  and 
because  of  the  illiteracy  and  near  illiteracy  of  many 
parents  who  are  unable  to  realize  the  importance  of 


90  THE    PATH    OF   LABOR 

schooling.  The  illiterate  voters  number  fully  15  per 
cent,  of  the  voting  population ;  when  to  this  are  added 
the  illiterates  and  near  illiterates  of  all  others  over  ten 
years  of  age  the  figures  become  appalling.  Education 
beyond  the  arts  of  reading  and  writing  and  figuring 
rapidly  passes  into  the  realms  of  luxury  and  is  con- 
sidered by  some  grown-ups  as  unnecessary  and  worth 
while  only  for  those  who  aspire  to  become  lawyers, 
doctors,  teachers,  etc.  Teaching  is  looked  upon  by 
many  people  as  an  easy  way  to  earn  money  sitting 
down !  Schools  are  sought  after  and  sometimes  pur- 
chased by  an  agreement  with  the  trustee  to  board  with 
him  or  render  him  some  special  favor,  even  a  cash 
price  is  a  condition  going  back  only  a  few  years.  The 
Mountaineer  has  been  shut  in  by  the  barriers  of  nature 
to  primitive  conditions  of  two  centuries  ago  when  mus- 
cular power  was  man's  greatest  need ;  consequently  he 
has  not  yet  come  into  a  deep  realization  of  the  value 
of  schools  and  books.  Bridging  the  gap  from  making 
a  living  by  the  sweat  of  the  brow  to  the  employment 
of  scientific  knowledge  and  skill  is  a  leap  of  six  gener- 
ations and  demands  not  only  great  educational  states- 
manship but  patient  effort  and  encouragement  in 
arousing  desire  for  intellectual  things. 

In  those  localities,  scattered  here  and  there  through- 
out the  mountain  region,  where  mission  schools  and 
community  centers  have  been  established,  the  change 
for  the  better  in  conditions  physical,  mental  and  moral 
is  at  once  apparent.  Too  much  credit  cannot  be  given 
to  the  value  of  these  small  but  efficient  centers  of  light 
in   uplifting  the  mountaineer.     By   long   and   careful 


IN    MOUNTAINS   AND    MILLS  91 

study  on  the  subject  I  am  convinced  that  we  never  can 
bring  the  great  mass  of  the  people  out  to  the  light, 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  we  must  carry  the  light  in.  I 
feel  confident  in  saying  that  were  a  half  dozen  such 
centers  of  influence  established  in  each  mountain 
county  of  the  seven  states,  the  so-called  "mountain 
problem"  would  be  solved  in  a  generation,  and  the 
wealth  of  sturdy,  pure  Anglo-Saxon  population  would 
be  ready  to  take  its  place  as  one  of  the  great  assets 
of  our  nation ! 

Occupations 

For  many  years  farming  and  lumbering  have  been 
the  chief  occupations  and  means  of  livelihood.  The 
conditions  of  those  living  in  the  valleys  or  broad  up- 
lands have  already  been  referred  to.  "The  mountain 
problem"  deals  with  those  in  isolated  coves  and  on 
steep  hillsides,  and  here  we  find  farming  conditions 
most  discouraging.  Hillsides  are  cleared  of  their 
natural  growth  of  timber,  the  ground  is  stirred  by 
shallow  plowing,  corn  is  planted  for  the  first  crop,  and 
because  the  grade  is  too  steep  for  a  horse,  it  must  be 
tended  by  hand.  When  the  crop  is  gathered  the 
ground  lies  bare  and  unprotected,  and  by  the  return 
of  springtime  much  of  the  top  soil  has  been  washed 
away  by  the  frequent  violent  rains.  Repetition  of 
this  program  for  a  number  of  years  renders  the  soil 
no  longer  fit  to  raise  anything  and  it  is  then  allowed 
to  "lie  out."  Effort  is  made  to  raise  no  more  than  will 
be  required  to  keep  the  family  in  corn  meal  and  the 
cow  and  mule  in  fodder  during  the  winter  months. 


92  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

Some  explanation  of  this  lack  of  inclination  to  be  fore- 
handed is  necessary.  The  menfolk  are  idle  much  of 
the  time,  not  because  they  are  temperamentally  lazy 
— the  reason  is  an  environmental  one  in  which  there 
is  no  economic  outlook.  The  land  is  by  very  nature 
fitted  to  poultry  and  stock  raising  or  to  fruit  growing. 
These  pursuits  have  so  far  met  with  little  favor,  for 
why  grow  peaches  or  apples,  or  have  eggs  and  butter 
for  market,  when  there  is  no  market?  The  stagnant 
conditions  of  the  commercial  life  are  due  largely  to  lack 
of  means  of  transportation.  Ideas  of  progress  resemble 
people  in  that  they  require  roads  over  which  they  may 
travel.  A  few  national  highways  running  through  the 
mountains  and  connecting  trade  centers  with  outlying 
districts  would  quadruple  the  energies  and  products  of 
the  whole  region.  The  razor-back  hog  and  the  scrub 
cow  have  had  their  place,  for  they,  too,  like  their  master 
have  been  able  to  endure  hardships  and  look  out  for 
part  of  their  own  board.  They  will  pass  away  as 
roads,  schools  and  churches  come  in.  The  day  is  at 
hand  when  all  mission  work  in  the  mountains  must 
take  into  consideration  the  construction  of  roads,  con- 
necting the  work  with  the  outside  world,  and  what  is 
more,  it  must  think  of  them  as  an  imperative  necessity 
taking  rank  in  importance  with  buildings.  I  fear  too 
much  of  the  pointing  has  been  up  while  the  great  need 
has  been  for  some  wise  person  to  point  the  way  out. 
Leadership  out  as  well  as  up  is  fundamental  to  all 
mission  work  in  the  mountains. 


IN    MOUNTAINS   AND   MILLS  93 

Public  Works 

We  are  hearing  more  and  more,  during  the  last  few 
years,  of  changing  conditions  in  the  mountains  owing 
to  the  development  of  coal  and  lumber  camps.  There 
is  no  coal  in  the  Carolina  mountains,  but  exceptionally 
rich  fields  extend  down  through  Virginia,  Kentucky 
and  Tennessee.  Tapping  these  fields  railroads  are 
rapidly  creeping  up  the  hollows  into  many  remote  dis- 
tricts, thus  bringing  in  the  outside  world,  with  all  its 
accompanying  blessings  and  evils.  Conditions  in  coal 
and  lumber  camps,  so  far  as  their  influence  on  the  life 
of  the  people  is  concerned,  are  very  similar.  On  the 
whole  the  camps  appear  to  have  bettered  conditions, 
in  that  there  is  always  steady  work  to  be  had,  at  good 
wages,  and  many  now  handle  money  who  before  had 
very  little.  Many  camps  maintain  district  nurses  and 
company  doctors.  There  has  been  some  difficulty  in 
keeping  the  men  steadily  at  work,  the  habit  being  to 
get  a  little  money  ahead  and  then  lay  off  until  more 
is  needed.  This  tendency  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the 
mountain  man  is  an  individualist,  and  co-operation 
is  a  principle  yet  to  be  learned.  However,  camps  are 
reluctant  to  bring  in  foreign  labor  where  it  can  be  at 
all  avoided.  One  amusing  incident  is  told  of  a  com- 
pany being  unable  to  induce  the  natives  to  do  the 
necessary  grading  for  the  railroad,  but  when  Negroes 
were  imported  for  the  labor,  they  made  much  com- 
plaint, and  threatened  to  run  them  off. 

One  authority  says,  "The  spirit  and  life  of  the  miner 
is  better  than  it  was  fifteen  years  ago ;  they  send  their 
children  to  day  school  and  Sunday-school  better,  they 


94  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

live  in  better  houses,  they  respond  more  readily  to 
appeals  for  better  roads,  better  schools  and  improved 
conditions  generally." 

In  this  brief  study  of  the  Mountaineer  and  his 
present  condition,  an  effort  has  been  made  to  state 
facts  simply  and  clearly  but  without  a  spirit  of  pessim- 
ism. Hard  and  trying  as  life  in  many  of  its  aspects 
is,  it  is  not  hopeless.  The  very  fact  that  these  sturdy 
folk  respond  slowly  to  changing  conditions,  but  never- 
theless surely  and  steadily,  but  makes  the  task  the  more 
worth  while.  Nowhere  else  in  our  country  can  be 
found  such  a  group  of  native  American  stock  with  a 
more  perfect  sense  of  loyalty  and  devotion  to  our 
nation.  These  men  of  the  mountains  will  acquit 
themselves  on  the  battlefields  of  Europe  second  to 
none.  They  know  neither  the  word  cowardice  nor  fear 
of  hardships.  The  great  mountain  people  are  the 
nation's  richest  undeveloped  asset  and  destined  to  take 

their  rightful  place  at  no  far  distant  time. 


IN    MOUNTAINS    AND    MILLS  95 


IN  MILLS 
ALEXANDER  JEFFREY  McKELWAY 

Southern  Factory  Workers 

Because  of  its  kindly  climate,  abundant  rainfall  and 
for  the  most  part  productive  soil,  the  South  has 
always  been  an  agricultural  rather  than  a  manufac- 
turing section  of  the  country.  The  comparatively  few 
manufacturing  enterprises  established  before  1861 
shared  the  general  ruin  wrought  by  the  Civil  War, 
and  industry  did  not  begin  to  revive  until  the  eighties. 
During  the  last  three  decades,  there  has  been  a  tre- 
mendous advance  in  manufactures  of  various  kinds, 
especially  where  the  cheapness  of  fuel  as  in  Alabama, 
Tennessee,  Kentucky,  and  Virginia,  or  the  harnessing 
of  waterpower  as  in  Georgia  and  the  Carolinas,  has 
encouraged  the  establishment  of  factories  and  work- 
shops. 

Along  the  Piedmont  edge  of  the  cotton-belt,  the 
prevailing  industry  for  the  last  thirty  years  has  been 
the  cotton  mill.  Beginning  with  Danville,  Virginia, 
the  cotton  manufacturing  region  of  the  South  stretches 
in  a  wide  curve,  with  its  convex  side  turned  toward  the 
coastal  plain,  to  the  western  borders  of  Alabama.  Mis- 
sissippi, Louisiana,  Arkansas  and  Texas  have  compar- 
atively few  cotton  mills.  In  Alabama,  the  cotton-mill 
industry  competes  with  the  steel  and  iron  industry  for 
first  place.  In  Tennessee  both  woolen  and  cotton  mills 
are  important.     In  North  Carolina  it  is  the  prevailing 


96  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

industry,  though  the  manufacture  of  woodenware  and 
furniture  has  a  center  at  Thomasville,  and  there  are 
large  tobacco  factories  at  Winston-Salem  and  at  Dur- 
ham. In  Virginia  the  manufacture  of  tobacco  is  a 
more  important  industry  than  cotton  manufacture,  but 
in  Georgia  cotton  manufacturing  is  the  commanding 
industry  of  the  state,  and  in  South  Carolina  is  almost 
the  sole  industrial  enterprise.  South  Carolina  stands 
next  to  Massachusetts  in  the  number  of  spindles,  and 
North  Carolina  has  more  cotton  mills,  though  of 
smaller  size  than  either  of  the  states  just  mentioned. 
The  nearness  of  the  supply  of  the  raw  material,  access 
to  coal  fields,  abundance  of  waterpower  and  above  all 
cheap  labor,  made  it  inevitable  that  the  characteristic 
and  commanding  industry  of  this  section  of  the  South 
should  be  the  manufacture  of  cotton.  Yet  it  is  a  pity 
that  an  industry  that  has  always,  in  England,  New 
England,  and  the  region  around  Philadelphia  been 
cursed  with  low  wages  and  the  wholesale  employment 
of  women  and  children  should  have  been  given  such  a 
place  of  importance  in  the  New  South.  The  cotton 
industry  cannot  thrive  in  a  high-wage  state  unless 
the  ranks  of  the  workers  are  constantly  recruited,  as  in 
Massachusetts  and  New  England,  generally  from  an 
immigrant  population  that  has  not  attained  to  the 
American  standard  of  living. 

Sources  of  Labor 

The  cotton  mill  operatives  of  the  South  are  almost 
exclusively  of  native  American  stock.  In  North  Car- 
olina, the  census  shows  that  less  than  one-tenth  of 


IN    MOUNTAINS   AND    MILLS  97 

one  per  cent,  are  of  foreign  birth  or  parentage.  Dur- 
ing the  long  period  of  agricultural  depression  follow- 
ing low  prices  for  corn,  cotton,  and  tobacco,  it  was 
an  easy  matter  to  persuade  the  tenant  farmers,  with  no 
immediate  prospect  of  bettering  their  condition  on  the 
farms,  to  move  to  the  cotton  mill  where,  unfortunately, 
the  husband  and  father  found  little  work  that  was 
possible  for  him,  but  where  the  labor  of  his  children 
and  his  womankind  was  in  demand.  The  labor  supply 
was  drawn  in  part  from  the  mountain  region  of  the 
Carolinas,  Georgia  and  Tennessee,  it  being  roughly 
estimated  that  about  one-fourth  of  the  labor  supply 
came  from  the  mountains:  mainly  from  the  Piedmont 
region,  where  most  of  the  mills  were  located,  and  from 
the  coastal  plain,  into  which  the  mills  have  also  pene- 
trated, though  not  in  such  numbers  as  exist  in  the 
Piedmont.  The  racial  stock  in  the  mountain  regions  is 
English,  with  an  admixture  of  Scotch-Irish.  In  the 
Piedmont  section  Scotch-Irish,  with  a  good  proportion 
of  English  and  German  stock,  German  colonies  having 
settled  this  region  before  the  Revolution.  In  the  Cape 
Fear  section  of  North  Carolina,  the  Highland  Scotch 
form  the  chief  supply  of  cotton  mill  labor,  and  in  the 
cotton  mills  of  the  coastal  plain  the  English  stock  pre- 
dominates. 

The  people  on  the  tenant  farms,  or  from  farms  of 
their  own  in  mountain  coves  and  the  sandy  region 
of  the  coastal  plain,  had  small  opportunities  for  educa- 
tion on  account  of  the  short  school  terms  and  the  use 
of  the  children  on  the  farms ;  The  churches,  though 
numerous,  were  generally  occupied    once   or    twice  a 


98  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

month,  the  majority  of  the  people,  except  in  the  Scotch 
and  Scotch-Irish  regions  where  they  are  Presbyter- 
ians, being  members  of  the  Methodist  and  Baptist 
Churches.  When  they  came  to  the  cotton  mills,  school 
buildings  were  in  most  cases  accessible,  but  the  de- 
mand for  the  labor  of  the  children  left  the  schools 
stripped  of  children  over  ten  or  twelve  years  of  age, 
the  age  depending  upon  the  standards  of  the  state  child 
labor  law  of  the  period  and  its  enforcement.  Until  very 
recently,  children  of  ten  years  of  age  could  be  em- 
ployed by  law  in  South  Carolina  and  Georgia,  and 
there  was  little  enforcement  of  the  law  which  estab- 
lished a  twelve-year  age-limit.  In  North  Carolina  the 
statutes  still  permit  the  employment  of  children  of 
twelve  years  and  there  is  practically  no  enforcement 
of  the  law.  In  addition  to  the  employment  of  children 
at  an  early  age,  there  was  the  long  working  day  to  be 
considered,  at  first  with  no  restriction  of  hours,  then 
with  the  establishment  of  a  sixty-six  hour  week,  which 
meant  a  twelve-hour  day  for  the  first  five  working 
days  of  the  week,  with  a  half-holiday  on  Saturday; 
now  with  the  sixty-hour  week  for  children  under  six- 
teen, which  means  an  eleven-hour  day.  For  many 
years,  night  work,  even  for  children,  added  its  horrors 
to  the  situation,  both  physically  and  morally,  North 
Carolina  being  the  worst  sinner  in  this  regard.  Now 
night  work  for  children  under  sixteen  is  pretty  gener- 
ally prohibited  by  law,  though  sometimes  with  poor 
enforcement  of  the  law. 


IN    MOUNTAINS   AND    MILLS  99 

Missions  and  Cotton  Mills 

Mission  churches  have  been  established  in  cotton 
mill  villages,  yet  few  of  these  churches  are  self- 
sustaining  or  have  regular  services  every  Sunday. 
Sunday  schools  are  more  generally  sustained.  But 
the  moving  habit  of  cotton  mill  employes,  constantly 
striving  to  benefit  their  condition  at  the  next  mill,  has 
militated  against  the  permanence  of  church  member- 
ship and  support.  Nor  have  the  churches  shown  any 
steady  or  continuous  zeal  for  the  religious  needs  of  the 
factory  workers,  mill  churches  having  been  more  of  a 
liability  than  an  asset  from  the  point  of  view  of 
financial  support.  It  can  be  readily  imagined,  also, 
that  after  a  sixty-six  or  sixty-hour  week  of  work,  after 
night  work  in  many  mills  continuing  until  Saturday, 
midnight,  there  was  little  encouragement  for  either 
adults  or  children  to  attend  church  and  Sunday  School 
on  Sunday.  With  old  church  relations  that  had  been 
established  in  the  country  ceasing,  with  those  re-estab- 
lished in  the  mill  villages  frequently  discontinued  through 
the  removal  of  families  from  one  mill  to  another,  the 
church-going  habit,  so  characteristic  of  the  Southern 
people,  was  largely  broken. 

Corporation  and  Betterment  Work 

In  recent  years,  the  larger  and  more  prosperous 
cotton  mills,  denominated  by  the  South  Carolina  Com- 
missioner of  Labor,  "show  mills,"  have  become  inter- 
ested in  alleviating  the  monotonous  condition  of  fac- 
tory employes  by  the  establishment  of  numerous 
kinds  of  betterment  work,  paid  for,  of  course,  by  the 


100  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

employes  themselves,  through  the  large  dividends 
their  labor  allows  the  mill-owners  to  accumulate.  In 
some  mills  hospitals  have  been  established,  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
halls  erected  and  their  work  encouraged,  playgrounds 
maintained  for  the  children,  in  a  few  instances  swim- 
ming pools  supplied,  schools  of  longer  terms  with 
better  buildings  and  better  paid  teachers  supported  in 
part  from  mill  funds,  and  more  regular  church  services 
supplied  through  the  payment  of  a  part  of  the 
preachers'  salaries  by  the  corporation.  But  at  the 
same  time,  the  very  mill  owners  who  thus  advertised 
their  benevolence  have  been  in  many  cases  the  influ- 
ential part  of  the  cotton  mill  lobby  that  at  the  state 
capital  has  resisted  any  legislation  looking  to  the 
abolition  of  child  labor  or  the  shortening  of  the  hours 
of  labor  even  for  the  mothers  of  the  race  or  for  their 
children. 

Federal  Child  Labor  Bill 

It  was  partly  because  of  the  child  labor  conditions  of 
many  of  the  Southern  states,  though  the  child  labor 
evil  is  a  national  one  and  no  part  of  the  country  has 
been  wholly  free  from  it,  that  the  Congress  of  the 
United  States  at  last  took  up  the  problem  of  child 
labor  as  one  of  national  concern,  and  in  the  summer  of 
1916  passed  the  Federal  Child  Labor  bill,  which  Presi- 
dent Wilson  approved  on  September  1  of  that  year. 
The  new  Act,  however,  did  not  go  into  effect  until 
September  1,  1917,  and  on  the  last  of  August,  an 
injunction  against  the  enforcement  of  the  act  was 
sought,  on  the  nominal  petition  of  a  father  of  cotton 


IN    MOUNTAINS   AND    MILLS  101 

mill  children,  who  claimed  that  he  was  entitled  to  their 
wages  until  they  were  twenty-one  years  of  age,  but 
really  on  the  motion  of  the  Southern  Cotton  Manufac- 
turers, who  employed  an  imposing  array  of  counsel  to 
argue  that  the  Child  Labor  Act  was  unconstitutional. 
Judge  James  E.  Boyd,  Federal  judge  of  the  Western 
District  of  North  Carolina,  agreed  with  the  contention 
of  these  attorneys  and  granted  the  injunction  against 
the  enforcement  of  the  Federal  law  within  the  juris- 
diction of  his  court.  That  has  not  interfered  with  its 
enforcement  elsewhere  in  the  United  States,  however, 
and  Congress  provided  a  fund  of  $150,000  to  enforce 
it.  The  duty  of  administering  the  law  and  inspecting 
the  factories  and  workshops  was  assigned  to  the 
Child  Labor  Division  of  the  Children's  Bureau,  Miss 
Grace  Abbott,  formerly  of  Chicago,  being  the  efficient 
chief  of  that  division.  The  Department  of  Justice  has 
appealed  the  injunction  case  to  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States  and  the  friends  of  the  children 
throughout  the  nation  hope  and  pray  that  that  great 
Court  will  see  its  way  clear  to  sustain  the  constitu- 
tionality of  an  Act  that  means  so  much  for  the  welfare 
of  the  children  and  their  protection  from  the  conse- 
quences of  child  labor. 

The  Federal  Child  Labor  Act  provides,  in  brief,  that 
the  products  of  no  mine  or  quarry  in  which  children 
under  sixteen  years  of  age  are  employed,  shall  be 
shipped  in  inter-state  or  foreign  commerce,  and  that 
the  products  of  no  factory,  cannery  or  work-shop  shall 
be  shipped  in  inter-state  or  foreign  commerce,  if  such 
establishments  employ  children  under  fourteen  years 


102  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

of  age  at  all,  or  children  under  sixteen  are  employed 
more  than  eight  hours  a  day,  or  more  than  six  days 
a  week,  or  at  night.  The  effect  of  the  law  has  already 
become  manifest  in  the  dismissal  from  employment 
of  thousands  of  children.  For  it  is  a  well-known  fact 
that  Federal  laws,  enforced  by  Federal  courts,  are 
much  more  effective  as  a  terror  to  evil-doers  than 
state  laws,  whose  enforcement  too  often  rests  with 
courts  and  juries  of  the  vicinage  which  may  be  inclined 
to  tolerate  the  very  evils  they  are  sworn  to  correct. 

The  existence  of  the  Federal  law  has  also  proved 
influential  in  inducing  the  legislatures  of  several 
states,  with  the  acquiesence  if  not  the  active  support 
of  the  manufacturers,  to  bring  their  state  legislation 
on  child  labor  up  to  the  Federal  standards,  as  manu- 
facturers doing  business  in  low  standard  states  would 
naturally  be  the  objects  of  the  special  vigilance  of 
Federal  inspectors.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
President  Wilson  signed  a  second  Emancipation 
Proclamation  on  September  1,  1916. 

The  Challenge  to  Home  Missions 

The  practical  abolition  of  child  labor  in  its  worst 
form  which  will  inevitably  result  from  the  adequate 
enforcement  of  the  Federal  law,  and  the  new  state 
laws,  will  give  a  splendid  opportunity  to  ministers  and 
home  mission  workers  for  doing  a  long  neglected  work 
among  a  population  rich  in  possibilities  of  service  to 
both  church  and  state.  One  of  the  first  effects  will 
be  an  advance  in  wages.  The  textile  industry  gener- 
ally has   been   a  low-wage   industry  because   it  has 


IN    MOUNTAINS   AND    MILLS  103 

involved  a  system  of  family  labor,  in  which  the  women 
and  children  of  the  household  have  all  contributed 
their  toil  for  the  family  support.  It  is  a  well  under- 
stood economic  law  that  child  labor  reduces  the  wage 
scale,  and  that  the  restriction  of  child  labor,  and  more 
certainly  its  abolition,  raises  wages  for  the  adult 
worker.  When  the  child  can  compete  with  its  father 
in  the  labor  market,  in  industry  requiring  in  most 
of  its  operations  so  little  skill  and  experience  that  the 
labor  of  the  child  is  as  valuable  as  the  labor  of  the 
adult,  the  wage  scale  is  measured  by  the  child  stan- 
dard. What  are  high  wages  for  a  child  are  low  wages 
for  the  head  of  a  household  on  which  to  support  his 
family  with  the  mother  the  home-maker  and  the  chil- 
dren at  school.  When  all  the  members  of  a  family 
able  to  work  are  employed,  the  sum  of  wages  will 
support  the  family,  and  higher  wages  for  the  individ- 
ual worker,  not  being  necessary,  will  not  be  paid.  The 
establishment  of  the  eight-hour  day  also  tends  to  the 
raising  of  the  wage  scale  through  the  increased  demand 
for  workers.  The  opportunity  for  the  education  of  the 
children  is  an  equal  opportunity  for  religious  instruc- 
tion, for  religion  does  not  thrive  where  illiteracy  pre- 
vails, and  "ignorance  is  not  a  remedy  for  anything." 
With  more  comfortable  living  conditions,  through  a 
better  wage  scale,  with  greater  leisure  through  the 
prevalence  of  shorter  hours,  there  is  larger  opportunity 
for  the  minister  and  the  mission  worker  to  gain  the 
attention  and  interest  of  the  people  in  the  things  of 
the  spirit.  The  mill  churches  will  tend  more  and  more 
to    self-support    and    the    people    will    feel    that    the 


104  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

churches  supported  by  themselves  belong  to  them. 
The  old  complaint  of  the  mill-workers  against  the  mill- 
owner,  "We  work  in  his  mill,  we  send  our  children  to 
his  school,  we  go  to  his  church,  we  are  sent  to  his 
hospital,  we  live  in  his  houses  and  we  are  buried  in 
his  grave-yard,"  will  be  forgotten.  For  one  of  the 
worst  things  about  the  estate  of  the  Southern  mill- 
workers  is  the  existence  of  a  belated,  though  some- 
times benevolent  feudalism,  which  has  effectually  pre- 
vented the  growth  of  democracy  and  the  establishment 
of  democratic  institutions. 

Lack  of  Organization 

The  organization  of  the  factory  workers  in  the  cot- 
ton mills  into  labor  unions  has  been  generally  impos- 
sible, on  account  of  the  opposition  of  the  factory 
owners;  and  the  helplessness  of  the  individual  in  deal- 
ing with  the  officials  of  a  corporation  has  been  ren- 
dered worse  by  the  lack  of  education,  of  which  child 
labor  has  deprived  a  whole  generation  of  cotton-mill- 
workers,  and  by  the  ownership  of  the  mill  villages 
with  all  that  they  contain  by  the  employers  and  not 
by  the  employes.  There  is  nothing  more  likely  to 
develop  the  independence  of  the  mill  workers  than  a 
better  wage  scale  and  better  living  conditions.  Hith- 
erto, his  freedom  of  choice  in  many  essential  things 
has  been  the  liberty  of  exchanging  one  feudal  lord  for 
another,  by  moving  to  another  mill  village. 

When  the  prohibition  movement  began  to  make 
headway  in  the  South,  one  of  the  first  restrictions  of 
the  liquor  traffic  was  that  made  for  rural  regions  and 


IN    MOUNTAINS  AND   MILLS  105 

unincorporated  towns.  With  this  step  gained,  the 
incorporation  of  towns  and  villages  was  actually  dis- 
couraged, lest  the  saloon  should  be  permitted  entrance 
by  a  vote  of  the  people  concerned.  But  now,  with  the 
Southern  states  so  largely  prohibition  territory  and 
with  national  prohibition  on  the  way,  the  reason  for 
this  anomalous  condition  of  affairs  in  the  South  no 
longer  exists.  Ministers,  teachers  and  mission  work- 
ers can  do  no  more  valuable  service  to  factory  com- 
munities than  by  starting  movements  for  the  incor- 
poration of  factory  villages.  As  the  case  stands  now 
in  the  typical  cotton  mill  town  of  the  South,  the  people 
have  absolutely  no  voice  in  their  own  local  govern- 
ment. They  vote  on  state  and  national  issues  and 
have  frequently  displayed  a  notable  degree  of  inde- 
pendence of  the  expressed  wishes  of  their  employers 
in  casting  their  votes.  But  local  self-government  for 
them  does  not  exist.  Yet  they  come  of  a  self-govern- 
ing race  and  they  are  sending  their  sons  now  to  the 
battlefields  of  Europe  to  help  in  making  the  world  safe 
for  democracy.  What  a  travesty  it  is  that  these 
returning  soldiers  of  America,  when  they  resume  their 
old  life  in  the  cotton  factories  of  the  South,  should 
have  no  voice  in  the  election  of  the  town  or  school 
officials,  local  authority,  wherever  it  exists,  being 
wholly  in  the  hands  of  their  employers.  For  illustra- 
tion, a  minister  who  was  once  employed  by  the  writer 
as  a  child  labor  investigator,  was  forbidden  access  to 
the  school  building,  was  forbidden  to  sleep  in  the  vil- 
lage hotel  and  was  practically  ordered  off  the  premises 
as  a  trespasser,  on  the  ground  that  the  village  and  all 


106  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

that  it  contained  was  mill  property.  The  owner  of 
another  factory  town  is  called  the  "King"  of  the  vil- 
lage and  rather  boasts  of  an  incident  that  has  been 
published  more  than  once,  of  the  visit  of  a  so-called 
"labor  agitator"  to  the  community,  and  of  the  order 
which  the  King  issued  and  was  duly  obeyed,  that  the 
visitor  should  be  put  on  the  next  train  leaving  town 
and  threateningly  invited  not  to  return.  With  the 
incorporation  of  mill  villages,  the  people  will  have  the 
privilege  of  electing  their  own  Mayor  or  Commis- 
sioners, of  adopting  directly  or  indirectly  their  own 
ordinances,  of  appointing  their  own  school  boards,  and 
of  paying  for  their  schools  through  just  and  equitable 
taxes,  poll  taxes  and  property  taxes,  which  will  fur- 
nish more  ample  funds  for  school  purposes  under  a 
system  of  local  district  taxation,  than  have  ever  been 
provided  even  by  the  most  liberal  mill  management 
through  benevolent  contributions. 

Misnomers 

There  has  been  a  great  deal  of  nonsense  spoken  and 
written  about  the  "poor  white  trash"  of  the  South. 
The  phrase  was  originally  given  by  the  negro  slaves 
to  the  whites  of  the  overseer  or  tenant  class  who  were 
unable  to  own  slaves  themselves.  There  is  no  "poor 
white"  class  in  the  South  that  is  distinct  from  the  poor 
of  any  other  section.  There  are  "poor  whites"  in  re- 
mote regions  of  New  York  State  that  have  remained 
poor  for  generations,  and  the  same  conditions  have 
obtained  throughout  the  more  inaccessible  mountain 
regions  of  the  Appalachian  system  from  Pennsylvania 


IN    MOUNTAINS   AND    MILLS  107 

to  Alabama.  There  are  also  other  districts  in  the 
South,  where,  because  of  the  poverty  of  the  soil,  the 
natives  have  remained  in  comparative  poverty,  and  are 
locally  styled,  "hill-billies,"  "sand-hillers,"  or  "crack- 
ers," the  latter  designation  coming  from  the  primitive 
methods  of  pounding  corn  in  a  mortar  to  make  hominy 
or  coarse  meal.  But  there  is  no  fixed  "poor  white" 
class  in  the  South.  The  tenant  class  on  the  farms  and 
the  cotton  mill  employees,  are  comparatively  poor,  be- 
cause of  hard  conditions  of  existence  and  the  absence 
of  education  which  tends  to  the  perpetuation  of 
ignorance  and  poverty  into  the  next  generation.  But 
in  general  it  may  be  said  that  the  "poor  whites"  of 
the  South  are  a  class  of  people  which  in  the  mass  is 
constantly  rising  into  a  better  condition,  from  which 
a  large  proportion  are  constantly  emerging  into 
affluence  and  influence,  and  into  which  are  constantly 
sinking  those  who  have  failed  in  the  battle  of  life,  who 
drag  their  children  down  with  them.  But  this  is  true 
of  those  whom  we  call  "the  poor"  everywhere.  There 
is  no  more  fertile  field  in  the  country  today  for  relig- 
ious, educational,  social  and  civil  agencies  than  the 
neglected  mill  villages  of  the  South. 

The  Opportunity 

The  Church  should  approach  the  problem  of  reach- 
ing and  training  and  evangelizing  the  mill  population 
of  the  South  not  from  the  viewpoint  of  their  miserable 
condition  which  should  appeal  to  the  sentiment  of 
pity,  but  from  the  knowledge  that  here  are  a  people 
of  native  American  stock,  who  have  resisted  immor- 


108  THE  PATH  OF  LABOR 

ality  in  family  relations,  who  are  naturally  religious, 
and  who  only  need  opportunity  to  respond  quickly  to 
the  stimulus  which  the  training  of  the  church  and  the 
school  can  give.  The  writer  has  been  a  teacher  in  a 
mill  school,  a  pastor  of  a  church  with  mission  churches 
for  factory  villages,  the  superintendent  of  the  home 
mission  work  of  his  church  in  a  manufacturing  state 
of  the  South,  and  for  the  past  thirteen  years  one  of 
the  Secretaries  of  the  National  Child  Labor  Com- 
mittee, whose  first  mission  was  the  abolition  of  child 
labor,  but  which  is  now  beginning  its  constructive 
task  in  the  encouragement  of  education  for  the  chil- 
dren of  all  the  people.  It  is  now  advocating  the  exten- 
sion of  Federal  aid  to  primary  education  for  the  wiping 
out  of  the  remaining  illiteracy  of  the  nation  and  for 
the  Americanization  of  the  foreign  population.  He 
can  testify  to  the  brightness  and  willingness  to  learn 
of  the  younger  generation  and  to  the  sobriety,  decency, 
and  self-respect  of  the  greater  part  of  the  older  mem- 
bers of  factory  communities.  The  coming  generation 
has  been  saved  from  the  menace  of  racial  degeneracv 
and  the  lowering  of  all  the  standards  of  life,  through 
the  abolition  of  the  child  labor  evil.  And  now  for  the 
Church  of  Christ  the  fields  are  white  for  the  harvest 
of  souls. 


IV 

AMONG  NEGRO  LABORERS 
LILY  HARDY  HAMMOND 


My  Father  worketh  hitherto,  and  I  work. — John  5 :  17. 

But  we  beseech  you,  brethren,  that  ye  study  to  be  quiet  and 
to  do  your  own  business,  and  to  work  with  your  own  hands, 
that   ye   may   walk  honestly  toward   them   that   are   without. — 

I  Thess.  4:11,  12. 

Study  to  show  thyself  approved  unto  God,  a  workman  that 
needeth  not  to  be  ashamed,  rightly  dividing  the  word  of  truth. — 

II  Tim.  2:15. 

Every  man  should  eat  and  drink  and  enjoy  the  good  of  all  his 
labors,  it  is  the  gift  of  God. — Eccles.  3:9,  11,  13. 

TO  AMERICA 
James  Welden-Johnson,  Litt.  D. 

How  would  you  have  us,  as  we  are? 

Or  sinking  'neath  the  load  we  bear? 
Our  eyes  fixed  forward  on  a  star? 

Or  gazing  empty  at  despair? 
Rising  or  falling?     Men  or  things? 

With  dragging  pace,  or  footsteps  fleet? 
Strong,  willing  sinews  in  your  wings? 

Or  tightening  chains  about  your  feet? 


IV. 

AMONG  NEGRO  LABORERS 

The  Great  War  has  left  no  people  of  earth  un- 
touched. From  the  beginning,  here  in  the  United 
States,  it  has  been  creating  new  problems,  and  setting 
old  ones  in  new  and  wider  relations.  We  can  never  be 
the  same  again.  Either  we  will  climb  a  little  nearer 
to  the  far,  high  democracy  of  Jesus  Christ,  or  we  will 
sink  in  our  relations  with  the  Negro,  as  well  as  in  all 
other  relations. 

We  speak  of  "the  Negro  problem"  as  if  white  people 
were  outside  of  it — spectators  merely,  or  at  most  stu- 
dents of  it;  yet  white  people  are  a  most  vital  and  prob- 
lematic half  of  it.  The  war  is  showing  this  in  new  and 
unexpected  ways.  It  first  lifted  the  Negro,  physically, 
and  in  the  nation's  thought,  out  of  a  sectional  environ- 
ment, and  set  him  in  one  that  is  national.  Beyond 
this,  the  world's  agony  is  bringing  to  all  of  us  world 
thoughts,  world  consciousness  and  duties  and  hopes. 
Slowly  the  Negro  is  being  drawn  within  the  scope  of 
this  new  world-inclusion  of  humanity,  never  again  to 
be  broken  off,  by  our  provincial  thoughts,  from  his  true 
world  relations. 

The  Negro  laborer  can  be  understood  only  as  part 

111 


112  THE   PATH   OF   LABOR 

of  the  world-mass  of  laborers.  Races  differ  enormous- 
ly in  development  as  well  as  in  deep  seated  character- 
istics, but  there  are  certain  elements  of  health  and 
progress  essential  to  all  races,  just  as  the  same  chemi- 
cal elements  are  essential  to  the  myriad  forms  of 
vegetable  life.  Be  it  sequoia  or  wood-sorrel,  every 
plant  must  have  oxygen,  carbon,  hydrogen;  brown, 
yellow,  white  or  black,  the  basal  elements  of  man- 
growth  are  the  same  for  all — justice  and  opportunity, 
to  the  full  capacity  of  each.  This  the  war  is  teaching. 
Weak  peoples,  undeveloped  folk,  the  ignorant,  the 
oppressed — these  too  must  be  set  on  this  common 
plane  and  share  these  elemental  necessities  of  all 
human  life. 

The  Farm  Laborer 

The  world  over,  these  least  esteemed  of  laborers 
have  suddenly  been  discovered  as  of  new  and  porten- 
tous significance  to  the  human  race.  The  war,  we  are 
told,  is  to  be  won  or  lost  on  the  farms,  in  the  fields, 
where  the  world's  poorest  and  most  neglected  toilers 
bend  over  the  furrows  in  ignorance  of  their  own 
resources  and  of  those  of  the  soil  in  which  they  delve. 
All  ignorance,  all  apathy,  all  lack  of  world-relations 
and  world-view  of  the  "hand"  in  the  field  has  become 
a  menace  to  the  freedom  of  the  human  race. 

The  majority  of  American  Negroes  belong  to  this 
poorest,  most  exploited  world-class.  Three  fourths  of 
the  ten  millions  of  them  are  country  dwellers.  Over 
half  of  all  who  work  for  money,  men  and  women,  are 
farmers  or  farm  "hands."    And  since  in  the  brief  limits 


AMONG    NEGRO    LABORERS  113 

of  one  chapter  it  is  impossible  to  consider  the  many 
small  groups  of  colored  laborers,  it  seems  best  to  take 
this  great  representative  class  and  look  at  it  as  it  is,  a 
thin  cross-section  of  the  world's  farming  folk,  now 
seen  as  essential  to  those  fine,  high  phases  of  life  which 
have  seemed  most  remote  from  their  rough,  uncultured 
toil.  The  world  is  looking  at  them  with  new  eyes. 
Here  in  the  South  we  are  looking.  And  to  some  of  us 
the  old  "Negro  problem"  dissolves  like  a  moving  pic- 
ture scene  into  the  world-wide,  age-old  problem  of 
poverty,  ignorance  and  neglect. 

The  War  and  Negro  Labor 

The  first  effect  of  the  war  upon  Negro  labor  has 
been  largely  to  remove  it  from  its  accustomed  haunts. 
Southern  white  folk  have  viewed  this  phenomenon 
with  mingled  feelings,  largely  dependent  upon  the 
extent  to  which  personal  interests  have  been  affected 
by  the  sudden  shrinkage  in  the  labor  supply;  but  they 
are  being  forced  beyond  this  personal,  provincial  view 
to  a  new  consideration  of  the  Negroes  and  of  their 
relations  to  them.  If  these  relations  are  to  continue 
on  a  scale  adequate  to  the  need  it  begins  to  appear 
that  a  broader  basis  must  be  found — a  basis  not  sec- 
tional, but  human.  This  the  war  is  doing  for  white 
people,  as  well  as  for  the  Negro. 

And  the  North?  To  the  Negro,  for  fifty  years,  the 
North  has  been  a  land  of  promise.  The  war  shows 
that  his  apparent  stability  in  the  South  has  been 
largely  due  to  lack  of  opening  there.  Whether  because 
of  racial  quality  or  of  environment,  the  power  of  initia- 


114  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

tive  in  the  race  is  low;  they  do  not,  as  a  race,  move 
against  obstacles.  But  as  soon  as  a  vacancy  for  labor 
was  created  they  flowed  into  it  as  steadily  as  water 
flows  down  hill.  The  pathos  of  it  was  their  belief  that 
they  were  going  to  friends;  that  they  would  find  not 
only  that  kindliness  in  personal  relations  to  which  they 
were  so  largely  accustomed,  but  beyond  that  a  wider 
race-justice  and  a  deeper  regard  for  them  as  men. 

But  the  emigration  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  them 
has  aroused  the  fears  of  laboring  folk,  and  has  taxed 
friendliness  to  the  breaking-point.  The  clashes  in  the 
North,  the  terrible  riots  in  the  Middle  West,  the  warn- 
ings of  union  labor,  threats  of  segregation,  sporadic 
demands  for  separate  schools — all  these  show  a  grow- 
ing antagonism  wherever  the  waves  of  migration  have 
left  any  considerable  deposit  of  black  laborers.  If  the 
South  is  becoming  aware  of  its  most  neglected  toilers 
as  an  indispensable  asset  of  its  prosperity,  the  North 
is  waking  to  them  as  citizens  undesired,  or  as  tools  to 
be  used  and  cast  aside.  This  also  the  war  has  done. 
It  has  set  the  Negro  before  us  as  a  national  concern, 
a  national  question  to  which  the  times  demand  an 
answer. 

A  War  for  Democracy 

We  are  fighting,  we  say,  for  the  freedom  of  the 
human  race ;  for  the  rights  of  feeble  folk ;  for  the  little 
nations,  the  helpless  groups,  those  whom  the  ruthless 
strong  would  exploit.  We  ask  no  compensation  but 
the  achievement  of  a  wider  justice  for  mankind.  The 
thought  of  Ireland  has  clouded  our  sense  of  comrade- 


AMONG    NEGRO   LABORERS  115 

ship  with  England :  she  must  measure  up  to  the  world- 
standard  the  war  has  set. 

And  the  Negro?  Our  personal  share  of  the  world- 
responsibility  of  the  strong  to  the  weak?  This  new, 
national  Negro,  who  has  emerged  from  his  ancient 
sectional  dwelling-place  to  stand  before  the  nation 
with  the  old  antagonism  darkening  the  new  environ- 
ment: have  we  seen  him  or  ourselves  in  our  world- 
relations  yet? 

What  will  we  do  with  the  Negro? — Not  we  the 
South,  but  we  the  Nation.  This  is  the  question  to 
which  the  war  demands  of  us  an  answer:  and  accord- 
ing to  our  answer  shall  we  rise  or  fall. 

What  should  England  do  with  Ireland?  Russia 
with  the  Jews?  The  Turks  with  the  Armenians?  All 
these  are  racial  questions,  some  of  them  different  in 
kind,  all  of  them  in  degree,  from  ours;  yet  all,  like 
ours,  to  be  worked  out  by  changing  applications  of  the 
unchanging  Law — by  the  right  of  the  weakest  to  jus- 
tice, and  to  the  opportunity  to  become  and  to  do  the 
best  that  it  is  in  him  to  be  and  to  achieve. 

One  cannot,  in  the  limits  of  one  chapter,  dig  into 
the  past  or  attempt  explanations :  I  have  tried  to  do 
that,  as  far  as  I  can,  in  a  book.1  What  is  here  needed 
is  some  outline  of  present  conditions,  and  of  things 
done,  and  possible  to  be  done,  to  better  them. 
Southern  by  long  descent,  my  heart  is  with  my  people 
and  my  faith  and  with  my  country  too.  We  have 
not  seen  the  Negro  yet.  The  war  has  shocked  us  into 
a  new  consciousness  of  him  ;  but  we  have  not  clearly 
seen  him  or  ourselves  in  our  world-relations.     Out  of 

'/n   Black  and   White:  An    Interpretation   of  Southern   Life,   Revell. 


116  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

this  fire  of  death  and  agony  we  may  hope  to  emerge 
world-dwellers,  with  larger  vision;  but  we  enter  it  a 
provincial  nation,  regarding  ourselves  as  a  separate 
entity,  not  as  an  integral  part  of  world  life.  And  it  is 
of  conditions  among  us  provincial  folk  we  must  speak 
plainly,  but  with  faith  and  hope. 

Conditions  in  the  South 

Of  the  7,000,000  Negroes  over  ten  years  of  age, 
5,000,000  are  reported  by  the  census  as  "engaged  in 
gainful  occupations";  of  these,  3,000,000,  men  and 
women,  do  agricultural  work.  Obviously,  the  condi- 
tion of  this  great  class  is  of  more  importance  to  the 
10,000,000  than  the  condition  of  all  other  working 
groups  combined.  The  migrants  are  chiefly  from  this 
class.  Their  numbers,  variously  estimated  at  from 
250,000  to  500,000,  show  their  deep  dissatisfaction  with 
conditions  on  the  farms.  Yet  the  average  white 
farmer,  who  employs,  perforce,  the  average  colored 
help,  is  as  dissatisfied  as  the  Negro.  A  conversation 
recently  overheard  in  a  public  place  recited  experiences 
which  could  be  easily  duplicated  in  most  rural  sections 
of  the  farther  South. 

The  speakers,  a  cotton  factor  and  a  lawyer,  each 
owned  a  farm  near  the  city,  in  which  they  were  sink- 
ing most  of  the  profits  of  their  city  business.  Like  all 
farm  owners,  they  supplied  their  tenants  with  shelter, 
food,  necessary  cash,  tools,  seed  and  fertilizer.  One 
of  them,  just  before  harvesting  a  crop  too  small  to 
repay  him  for  advances  to  the  tenant,  found  that  the 


Model  Teacher's   Home 
Built  by   Principal  and   Schoolboys 


Courtesy    of   Jcancs-Matcr    I- una) 
School    Farm,    Brunswick    Co.,    Va. 


AMONG    NEGRO   LABORERS  117 

latter,  instead  of  using  the  expensive  fertilizer  pro- 
vided, had  sold  it  for  a  song  to  buy  whiskey. 

"It  wouldn't  have  done  you  any  good  if  he  had  put 
it  on,"  said  the  other.  "I  have  quit  my  business  and 
stood  over  one  set  of  tenants  after  another,  and  seen 
the  fertilizer  go  on ;  but  the  gathered  corn  and  cotton 
shrink  at  night.  I  didn't  buy  any  fertilizer  this  spring; 
the  more  I  put  into  my  farm  the  more  I  lose." 

Their  talk  covered  an  experience  of  years.  They 
had  no  explanation  of  the  dishonesty  and  shiftlessness 
of  the  Negroes  beyond  the  usual  one  that  "niggers" 
are  like  that,  and  you  can't  help  yourself.  The  South's 
one  hope,  they  thought,  lay  in  immigration  after  the 
war.  How  this  might  affect  the  Negro  did  not  occur 
to  them ;  they  were  thinking  in  terms  of  farm  owners 
who  understood  building  up  soil  but  were  absolutely 
ignorant  about  building  up  labor.  This,  however,  was 
before  the  exodus  began. 

Another  common  trouble  in  some  sections  is  the 
laborer's  desertion  of  his  employer,  notwithstanding 
his  contract,  at  the  most  critical  period  of  cultivation, 
or  when  some  perishable  crop  needs  harvesting.  A 
Mississippi  lawyer,  who  is  so  much  the  Negro's 
friend  that  he  has  frequently  stood  for  them  in  the 
Courts  when  it  was  against  his  own  interests  to  do  so, 
said  recently  that  more  than  a  score  of  Negroes  in  his 
county  had  left  him  in  this  way,  owing  him  from  fifty 
to  five  hundred  dollars  for  cash  and  groceries  ad- 
vanced, in  addition  to  causing  the  loss  of  his  crops ; 
and  that  his  was  a  common  experience.  This  ex- 
plained, he  said,   the  illegal   schemes   resorted   to  to 


118  THE    PATH    OF   LABOR 

hold  farm  laborers;  it  was  that  or  ruin  for  many- 
farmers.  A  white  man,  he  declared,  could  be  jailed 
for  breaking  a  contract;  but  with  a  Negro  there  was 
no  redress. 

"Can't  he  be  jailed,  too?"  was  asked. 

"He  won't  mind  that,  especially  if  winter  is  coming 
on ;  and  the  white  man's  support  of  him  is  merely 
shifted  to  another  item  of  his  budget." 

Against  this  must  be  set  the  recent  statement  of  a 
Louisiana  planter  who  employs  some  1,500  colored 
laborers.  He  has  no  trouble,  he  says;  but  for  years 
he  has  followed  a  policy  of  building  up  his  working 
force  as  well  as  his  soil.  Their  homes  are  sanitary; 
each  family  has  its  own  garden  patch,  and  time  to 
cultivate  it.  Improved  methods  of  agriculture  are 
taught,  and  they  are  encouraged  to  practice  them  on 
their  own  land.  Thrift  and  ambition  are  promoted; 
but  the  more  independent  the  men  become  the  more 
closely  are  they  bound  to  the  man  who  has  made  it  to 
their  interest  to  promote  his. 

Instances  like  this  are  exceptional;  yet  in  every 
county  of  every  State  some  Negroes  show  daily  that 
integrity,  efficiency  and  thrift  are  possible  to  the  race. 
In  some  industrial  centers  as  well  as  on  some  great 
farms  welfare  work  for  colored  employees  is  being 
most  successfully  carried  on.  At  Greensboro,  N.  C, 
and  at  Birmingham  and  Corona,  Ala.,  such  work  is 
found  as  beneficial  for  blacks  as  for  whites.  Workers 
of  both  races  respond  in  the  same  way  to  good  hous- 
ing, schools,  recreation  centers,  libraries,  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
work,  etc. ;  and  the  white  employers  concerned  are 


AMONG    NEGRO    LABORERS  119 

unanimous  in  the  belief  that  such  work  among-  their 
colored  laborers  pays  financially  as  well  as  from  a 
humanitarian  standpoint.  This  was  also  shown  in  a 
statement  made  by  a  prominent  business  man  of  New 
Orleans  before  a  recent  gathering  of  club  women  in 
that  city.  He  said  that  in  an  investigation  made  con- 
cerning the  Negro  exodus  by  an  organization  to  which 
he  belonged,  and  extending  through  a  number  of 
counties,  it  was  found  that  few  Negroes  had  gone 
from  those  plantations  where  housing  conditions  were 
good,  or  where  the  men  had  a  chance  to  get  ahead  for 
themselves :  the  heaviest  emigration  was  from  those 
farms  which  offered  the  "hand"  little  more  than  exist- 
ence in  return  for  his  labor. 

But  here  again  there  are  exceptions.  A  certain 
Mississippi  town  was  denuded  of  its  cooks  and  butlers 
last  winter  without  warning.  Many  of  these  house- 
hold workers  had  been  in  the  employ  of  the  same  fam- 
ily for  from  three  to  twenty  years ;  yet  only  one 
servant  told  her  employer  when  she  left  that  she  would 
not  be  back  in  the  morning;  the  rest  just  disappeared. 
Unfortunately  they  left  behind  them  a  deepened  dis- 
trust of  the  Negroes,  and  a  new  bitterness  toward 
them,  which  tinges  the  thoughts  of  the  community 
concerning  the  entire  race.  It  is  the  old  deadly,  dead- 
ening story  over  again,  "They're  like  that,  and  you 
can't  help  yourself." 

The  Negro  Viewpoint 

What  is  the  Negro  view?  This  question  is  being 
asked  more  and  more.     In  a  number  of  cities  promin- 


120  THE   PATH   OF  LABOR 

ent  white  men  are  calling  together  Negro  leaders  to 
discuss  the  causes  and  cure  of  the  present  situation. 
They  give,  with  little  variation,  the  following  reasons : 
their  people's  legal  status,  lack  of  protection  to  life 
and  property,  deprivation  of  civil  rights,  segregation 
laws,  low  wages,  and  lack  of  educational  advantages 
for  their  children. 

These  grievances  are  receiving  a  wider  attention 
than  ever  before.  It  grows  plainer  that  in  the  welfare 
of  the  Negro  the  welfare  of  the  South  is  at  stake.  It 
is  one  more  lesson  in  God's  great  course  in  world- 
justice — another  demonstration  that  selfishness  can- 
not pay  in  the  long  run,  even  in  dollars  and  cents. 
Agricultural  experts  estimate  the  agricultural  loss  of 
the  South  through  the  exodus  as  $200,000,000.00  for 
1917.  The  most  influential  newspapers  are  saying 
plainly  that  if  the  Negro  is  to  stay  in  the  South  it  must 
be  made  to  his  interest  to  do  so. 

Lack  of  Legal  Protection 

"The  great  majority  of  us  are  safe,  all  our  lives," 
said  an  educated  Negro  when  questioned  lately;  "and 
we  all  know  that.  The  trouble  is,  none  of  us  is  sure 
that  we  individually  belong  to  that  majority.  When 
something  happens  like  that  case  you  referred  to, 
where  an  honest,  hard-working  man  couldn't  be  pro- 
tected by  whites  who  respected  him  from  a  small,  law- 
less gang,  it  sends  a  shock  through  my  people  from 
one  end  of  the  State  to  the  other.  They're  afraid. 
Honesty  doesn't  protect.  They  know  such  things 
don't  happen  often ;  but  they  know  it's  quite  possible 


AMONG    NEGRO   LABORERS  121 

they  may  be  the  next  one.  That  is  what  it  seems  to 
me  you  friendly  white  people  fail  to  appreciate — the 
background  of  fear  in  colored  life.  It's  hard  to  be  a 
man  when  you're  always  uneasy,  not  just  for  yourself, 
but  for  everybody  you  love.  And  unless  you  live  on 
a  higher  level  than  most  people  ever  get  up  to,  it's  hard 
to  be  a  man  when  you  feel  being  a  man  doesn't  protect 
you." 

That  this  condition  will  end,  and  that  the  war  and 
the  migration  will  hasten  its  ending,  seem  to  the  writer 
certain.  Plans  for  concerted  Southwide  effort  for 
better  law-enforcement  and  protection  of  the  Negroes 
were  under  consideration  by  influential  Southern  men 
before  we  entered  the  war;  and  a  recent  inquiry 
showed  that  leading  men  in  every  State  and  in  every 
walk  of  life  are  ready  to  help  any  practical  movement 
to  that  end,  and  feel  the  urgent  need  of  it.  But  injus- 
tice and  prejudice  are  not  confined  to  the  South  ;  it 
will  help  us  all  to  remember  that  the  obstacles  to  jus- 
tice are,  like  the  responsibility  to  achieve  justice,  not 
sectional  but  national.  North  and  South  we  should 
set  about  our  common  task  with  a  new  humility,  and  a 
new  patience  with  one  another.  Yet  the  South  should 
lead  the  way,  both  because  of  the  future  and  -of  the 
past.     National  justice  waits  on  Southern  leadership. 

Lack  of  Civil  Rights 

The  lack  of  civil  rights  is  increasingly  a  cause  of 
bitterness  among  the  Negroes,  and  will  cut  deeper 
every  year  until  those  rights  are  granted.  The  demand 
for  such  rights,  among  all  races,  gathers  strength  as 


122  THE    PATH    OF    LABOR 

the  race  approaches  fitness  for  citizenship.  Every- 
thing that  makes  the  Negro  less  of  a  menace  to  our 
institutions  and  more  of  an  industrial  and  moral  asset 
to  the  nation  increases  his  desire  for  civil  rights,  and 
his  resentment  at  being  deprived  of  them.  To  just 
the  extent  that  he  emerges  from  ignorance,  inefficiency 
and  vice ;  to  just  the  extent  that  he  adds  to  our 
economic  prosperity ;  to  just  that  extent  will  his  de- 
mand for  citizenship,  and  the  danger  of  refusing  it, 
grow.  Some  signals  of  that  danger  are  already 
discernible.  A  wealthy  Louisianian  said  not  long 
ago,  "The  status  of  the  Negro,  the  whole  relation  of 
the  white  race  to  him,  is  a  question  that  is  already 
rising  for  settlement.  It  will  never  down  again  until 
it  is  settled  right.  We  must  go  to  the  bottom  of  things 
before  we  can  have  real  peace  or  prosperity  in  the 
South." 

That  all  Negroes  should  have  the  franchise  no  one 
who  knows  them  will  believe;  nor  do  their  leaders 
ask  it.  It  is  madness  to  put  the  destiny  even  of 
ignorance  in  ignorant  hands;  and  the  overwhelming 
mass  of  the  Negroes  are  ignorant  to  an  extreme  degree. 
Even  when  not  ignorant  they  lack  the  race  experience 
of  self-control,  the  centuries-long  training  toward 
democracy  of  the  whites.  For  the  majority  of  them  a 
benevolent  paternalism  appears  a  present  necessity. 

But  we  need  a  test  of  citizenship  which  will  apply 
to  all  alike,  regardless  of  the  color  of  their  skin.  An 
ignorant  voter  is  liable  to  be  an  un-moral  rather  than 
an  immoral  voter;  but  as  such  he  is  a  menace  to  hon- 
est government  regardless  of  his  race.     The  basis  of 


AMONG    NEGRO    LABORERS  123 

ascendancy,  as  a  great  Alabamian  has  pointed  out,  is 
fitness  for  it,  not  skill  in  holding  other  races  down. 
True  faith  in  our  own  race  requires  justice  to  the  weak 
about  us.  The  Negro  who  measures  up  to  the  test 
should  vote :  and  the  white  man  who  cannot  should  be 
shut  out. 

This  is  the  crucial  point.  To  stand  here  is  to  invire 
criticism  from  every  scheming  politician  in  the  land. 
But  politicians  pass:  and  God's  laws  of  justice  stand. 
The  best  South,  in  ruling  the  Negroes  out  of  politics 
when  scarcely  any  of  them  were  fitted  to  vote,  was 
safeguarding  both  them  and  the  government  from  cor- 
ruption. The  strange  thing  is  they  did  not  see  they 
opened  the  way  for  corruption  in  giving  the  ballot  to 
whites  whose  ignorance  was  in  no  way  neutralized  by 
the  color  of  their  skins,  and  who  are  still  a  menace 
to  democracy  and  a  temptation  to  unscrupulous 
politicians. 

Segregation  Laws  and  Housing 

The  average  Negro  does  not  want  white  neighbors 
any  more  than  they  want  him ;  but  he  does  want 
decent  surroundings.  The  Negroes  of  the  better 
classes  object  with  bitter  intensity  to  being  forced  to 
live,  as  many  of  them  are,  in  white  vice-districts.  This 
condition,  together  with  the  ugliness  and  unhealthful- 
ness  of  most  sections  allotted  for  colored  homes,  drives 
some  to  seek  a  place  in  white  districts.  Christian 
whites  must  stand  for  justice  in  this  vital  matter;  if 
they  do,  there  will  be  no  need  for  segregation  taws. 

This  form  of  justice  is  less  urgent  in  the  North  than 


124  THE   PATH    OF   LAEOR 

in  the  South  only  because  fewer  Negroes  live  there. 
In  every  city  of  the  nation  where  Negroes  in  any  con- 
siderable number  are  found  the  principle  of  this  justice 
is  violated.  It  is  true  it  is  not  a  racial  injustice;  it  is 
part  of  the  world-injustice  of  indifference  and  greed  to 
the  poor;  but  it  falls  heavily  on  the  Negroes,  North 
and  South. 

Yet  in  both  sections  it  has  been  demonstrated  that 
colored  laborers  can  be  healthfully  and  attractively 
housed  at  moderate  rentals,  and  to  the  reasonable 
profit  of  the  investor  in  real  estate.  This  is  shown  on 
a  large  scale  in  Cincinnati  and  Washington ;  and  in 
smaller  ventures  in  Kansas  City,  in  Newport  News, 
Va.,  in  several  Georgia  experiments,  and  in  other 
places. 

Low  Wages  and  Poor  Education 

These  causes  of  unrest  are  closely  linked.  Very 
often  decent  living  is  impossible  on  the  wages  paid 
colored  labor;  yet  in  many  instances  such  labor  is  paid 
all  that  it  is  worth;  for  ignorance  produces  little  and 
costs  much. 

What  follows  applies  chiefly  to  the  country  schools. 
Conditions  in  the  cities  are  more  or  less  mitigated, 
some  cities  having  excellent  school  facilities  for 
colored  children,  and  all  of  them  making  better  pro- 
vision for  them  than  can  be  found  in  the  country. 

But  the  heart  of  the  race  problem  lies  in  the  country. 
Over  three-fourths  of  the  colored  people  are  born, 
work,  and  die  there.  The  country  wage,  the  country 
home,  the  country  school,  are  vital  to  any  just  solu- 


AMONG    NEGRO    LABORERS  125 

tion.  If  the  churches  are  to  serve  the  Negro  they 
must  meet  his  country  needs,  and  touch  and  broaden 
his  country  life.  When  this  is  done  the  wage  ques- 
tion will  settle  itself.  It  is  a  common  saying  that  the 
resources  of  the  South  have  as  yet  been  merely 
scratched  on  the  surface;  it  is  even  more  true  of  her 
labor  resources  than  of  her  material  and  agricultural 
assets. 

A  Remarkable  Report 

A  flood  of  light  is  thrown  on  the  condition  and 
needs  of  colored  people  by  a  recently-issued  Report 
on  Negro  Education.2  It  represents  three  years  of 
work  by  a  group  of  experts  under  the  direction  of  the 
U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education,  with  the  financial  co- 
operation of  the  Stokes  Foundation.  Southern  State 
officials  and  leading  men  have  also  assisted,  as  well 
as  the  leading  institutions  for  colored  youth  which  are 
supported  by  Northern  churches  and  philanthropy.  It 
is  the  first  national  investigation  and  survey,  and  from 
it  there  emerges  a  well-considered,  constructive  edu- 
cational program  for  the  race  which  will  doubtless  be 
increasingly  worked  out  by  both  sections  in  co-opera- 
tion with  the  Negroes  themselves.  An  abstract  of  the 
Report  will  be  sent  free  to  any  applicant :  Only  the 
barest  outline  can  be  given  here.  It  does  full  justice 
to  the  efforts  and  sacrifices  of  both  North  and  South ; 
yet  a  comprehensive  survey  shows,  as  in  our  foreign 
mission  fields,  overlapping  and  waste,  and  the  possi- 
bility of  fitting  an  educational  program  more  closely 
to  the  needs  of  the  people.    Almost  unconsciously,  as 

*  Negro    Education;    Bulletin,    1916.    No.    39.      Department    of    Interior, 
Bureau  of  Education. 


126  THE    PATH    OF   LABOR 

one  reads,  one  sees  in  a  new  light  the  status  of  Negro 
labor,  the  exodus,  the  Negro  himself,  and  much  that 
many  of  us  have  considered  racially  characteristic. 

Southern  Schools 

The  South  spends  annually  about  $6,000,000.00  on 
colored  public  schools — a  small  sum  as  compared  with 
the  needs,  or  with  the  sum  spent  on  schools  for  whites ; 
yet  the  South  is  still  relatively  poor,  so  that  while  the 
percentage  of  State  income  spent  on  education  is  often 
larger  than  in  other  sections,  the  actual  sum  per  child 
of  school  age  is  only  a  half  or  a  third  of  the  sum  avail- 
able in  the  North  and  West.  Many  children  between 
the  ages  of  six  and  fourteen  are  unprovided  for — about 
25%  of  white  children  and  43%  of  colored. 

When  all  is  said  this  is  a  serious  discrepancy;  but 
even  more  serious  is  the  waste  of  the  money  spent.  A 
Southern  State  Superintendent  says : 

"There  has  never  been  any  serious  attempt  in 
this  State  to  offer  adequate  educational  facilities  for 
the  colored  race.  The  average  length  of  the  term  for 
the  State  is  four  months ;  practically  all  of  the  schools 
are  taught  in  dilapidated  churches ;  .  .  .  practically 
all  the  teachers  are  incompetent,  possessing  little 
or  no  education  .  .  .  some  of  them  have  as  many  as 
100  students  to  the  teacher." 

A  Southern  supervisor  of  white  elementary  rural 
schools  writes : 

"I  never  visit  one  of  these  (Negro)  schools  without 
feeling  that  we  are  wasting  a  large  part  of  this  money 
and   are   neglecting   a   great    opportunity.      The    Negro 


AMONG    NEGRO    LABORERS  127 

school  houses  are  .  .  .  usually  without  comfort, 
equipment,  lighting-  or  sanitation.  .  .  .  Most  of  the 
teachers  are  absolutely  untrained,  and  have  been  given 
certificates,  not  because  they  have  passed  the  county 
examination,  but  because  it  is  necessary  to  have  some 
kind  of  Negro  teacher.  Among  the  Negro  rural 
schools  which  I  have  visited  I  have  found  only  one  in 
which  the  highest  class  knew  the  multiplication  table." 
It  was  in  view  of  such  facts  that  the  Woman's  Mis- 
sionary Council  of  the  Southern  Methodist  Church 
put  among  the  duties  of  the  Social  Service  Committees 
of  its  auxiliaries  the  visiting  of  colored  public  schools, 
"requiring  of  the  public  authorities  that  their  premises 
be  kept  sanitary,  helping  to  secure  colored  teachers  of 
a  high  grade,  and  favoring  the  introduction  of  indus- 
trial training."  There  is  here  a  vast  field  for  home 
mission  work  and  for  the  education  of  the  public 
conscience.  There  are  also  signs  of  a  growing  interest 
on  the  part  of  the  whites  in  these  schools,  and  of  their 
appreciation  of  the  work  of  the  agents  of  the  Jeanes 
Foundation  in  the  rural  schools — an  appreciation  in- 
creasingly shown  in  money  contributions,  and  in 
attendance  at  closing  time  to  inspect  the  industrial 
work  introduced,  and  the  exhibits  of  the  boys'  and 
girls'  clubs.  The  day  of  indifference  is  passing.  The 
Southern  University  Race  Commission  has  issued  a 
strong  appeal  to  the  college  men  of  the  South  to  arouse 
public  interest  in  colored  public  schools  "on  the  ground 
of  the  public  welfare  and  common  justice." 


128  THE    PATH    OF   LABOR 

The  Need  for  Teachers 

Southern  State  reports  show  that  over  50%  of  all 
colored  public  school  teachers  have  themselves  had 
less  than  six  elementary  grades  of  schooling.  In  the 
rural  districts,  where  75%  of  the  race  live,  this  lack 
of  training  is  shared  by  three  fourths  of  the  teachers. 
The  waste  of  money  runs  yearly  into  millions :  the 
human  waste  is  incalculable. 

It  is  out  of  these  conditions  that  almost  the  greatest 
need  of  the  race  rises,  an  outstanding  challenge  to  the 
humanity  and  the  Christianity  of  America :  the  moral 
need,  the  human  need,  the  labor  need,  for  teachers  who 
can  teach  in  the  rural  schools  the  things  that  country 
people  need  to  know  for  upright,  efficient,  happy 
country  living. 

Teachers  Supplied  by  North  and  South 

The  South  spends  yearly  about  one-third  of  a  mil- 
lion dollars  on  industrial  and  normal  schools  for 
Negroes.  Some  of  them  do  excellent  work ;  but 
greatly  increased  accommodations  and  equipment  are 
needed :  and  the  wise  advice  of  the  Southern  (white) 
Teachers'  Association  should  be  heeded  in  all  the 
States,  instead  of  as  at  present  in  only  one  or  two. 
Southern  white  teachers  should  take  part  in  the 
teacher-training  in  all  the  schools,  and  thereby  build 
up  ideals  of  service  in  both  races.  The  churches  of 
the  South  are  helping  to  create  a  sentiment  which  will 
make  this  possible.  In  all  denominations  there  is  some 
movement  of  the  white  women  toward  helping  the 
colored  women  in  their  missionary  organizations ;  and 


AMONG    NEGRO    LABORERS  129 

in  the  Southern  Presbyterian  and  Southern  Methodist 
churches  there  is  a  distinct  and  growing  effort  to 
establish  points  of  communication  between  cultured 
white  women  and  Negro  homes.  This  is  shown  in 
settlement  work,  in  the  teaching  of  colored  Sunday- 
School  classes,  in  institutes  for  colored  home-makers, 
and  in  Community  Clubs  organized  by  white  women 
and  run  in  co-operation  with  educated  colored  women 
for  the  benefit  of  colored  mothers.  This  work,  small 
as  it  is,  is  yet  scattered  through  many  States.  It  is 
reinforced  by  the  work  of  the  W.  C.  T.  U.  and  the 
Y.  W.  C.  A.  women,  and  splendidly,  and  to  a  fast- 
growing  extent,  by  Southern  Club  women.  All  this 
is  bound  to  react  in  time  upon  public  sentiment,  and 
to  help  in  making  possible  the  ideal  set  forth  by  the 
Southern  Teachers'  Association  above  referred  to. 

Meanwhile,  and  for  fifty  years,  nearly  all  the  trained 
teachers  the  Negro  race  has  furnished  have  come  out 
of  schools  financed  by  Northern  churches  and  North- 
ern philanthropy.  These  agencies  furnish  yearly 
about  $2,500,000.00  for  these  schools,  the  Negroes 
themselves  giving  about  $500,000.00  more  for  higher 
education  yearly. 

Money,  however,  is  the  least  part  of  what  the  North 
has  given  :  and  this  it  is  time  for  us  to  recognize.  Not- 
withstanding some  mistakes  and  some  misfits,  the  men 
and  women  who  have  spent  themselves  in  the  colored 
schools  have  been  of  the  North's  best  blood  and  cul- 
ture, and  have  been  moved  by  that  spirit  of  service  to 
the  neediest  which  is  of  the  very  essence  of  Christi- 
anity.    They  gave  this  service,  too,   in   the   time  of 


130  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

famine — in  those  bleak  and  barren  years  when  the  best 
white  South,  which  had  so  long  supplied  ideals  to  the 
Negroes  through  a  thousand  channels  of  daily  contact, 
was  withdrawn  into  the  desert  of  its  own  suffering; 
and  when  the  South,  in  a  changed  world,  began  to 
work  out  a  new  development  in  which  neither  race  had 
found  its  adjustment  to  the  other.  On  them  have  fallen 
the  burden  and  the  honor  of  a  preparation  of  colored 
leaders  which  make  possible  the  Negro's  co-operation 
in  the  adjustment  which  is  to  come. 

Increased  Efficiency  for  Northern  Schools 

The  Bureau  of  Education  reports  625  schools  for 
the  higher  education  of  Negroes.  Half  of  the  $3,000,- 
000.00  spent  yearly  upon  them  comes  from  North- 
ern churches,  $1,000,000.00  from  Northern  phil- 
anthropy, and  $500,000.00  from  Negroes.  266  of 
these  schools  are  classed  as  "important."  Others  do 
good  work  in  a  small  sphere.  Some  are  said  to  be 
"justified  only  on  denominational  grounds."  Many  of 
them  are  known  as  "colleges,"  yet  75%  of  the  87,000 
pupils  are  in  elementary  grades,  11,500  are  in  second- 
ary departments,  and  only  1,500  are  real  college 
students.  The  waste  and  overlapping  here  are  ap- 
parent. 

It  also  appears  that  the  old  classical  type  of  college 
education  is  mainly  offered,  though  white  colleges 
have  made  large  adjustments  to  present-day  needs. 
This  is  partly  because  of  the  Negro's  attitude.  The 
average  member  of  the  race  knows  little  of  the  vast 
development,  here  and  abroad,  of  industrial  education 


AMONG    NEGRO    LABORERS  131 

for  whites ;  nor  of  the  connection  between  his  own 
industrial  ignorance  and  his  unsatisfactory  economic 
status.  Hampton,  Tuskegee,  and  other  industrial 
schools  have  shown  the  Negroes  within  their  influence 
the  way  of  progress  for  the  masses  of  their  own — or 
any — race;  but  to  the  majority  real  education  means 
Latin,  Greek  and  mathematics ;  and  hand-labor  smacks 
of  a  return  to  that  slavery  which  above  all  things  they 
rightly  desire  to  be  done  with.  This  great  class  does 
not  know  what  a  real  college  is ;  the  name  itself  is  the 
magnet.  And  the  more  easily  attained  the  d< 
is  the  closer  it  approximates  their  vague  ideal  of  the 
highest  educational  good. 

Yet  the  masses  of  every  race  must  work  with  their 
hands.  Their  education  must  lift,  beautify  and  make 
efficient  a  life  of  toil  if  it  is  to  be  education  in  the 
highest  sense.  And  since,  for  as  far  ahead  as  one  can 
now  see,  most  Negro  workers  are  destined  for  agri- 
cultural labor,  the  outstanding  need  is  for  teachers 
who  can  adjust  the  masses  to  that  labor  in  a  way  to 
secure  for  them  healthful,  successful  and  happy  lives. 
This  the  Bureau  of  Education  pleads  for  as  the  main 
work,   numerically   speaking,   of   the   Northern   schools. 

The  Need  for  First-class  Colleges 

The  need  of  highly  trained  leaders  for  our  10,000,000 
American  Negroes  is  a  self-evident  fact.  No  group  in 
our  Nation  needs  such  leaders  more.  The  outstanding 
poverty  of  every  college  for  Negroes  in  the  country 
shows  a  lack  of  vision,  and  even  of  business  imagina- 
tion, among  white  people  little  less  than  calamitous. 


132  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

Until  they  have  an  adequate  leadership  the  masses 
must  stumble  along,  a  moral  and  economic  burden 
instead  of  the  moral  and  economic  asset  they  can 
become. 

The  death  rate  among  Negroes  clamors  not  only  for 
better  administration  of  our  health  laws,  but  for 
thousands  of  well-prepared  Negro  doctors  to  lift  the 
sanitary  standards  of  their  people.  The  need  for  a 
ministry  of  a  high  type  is,  according  to  the  best  Ne- 
groes, appalling;  and  their  preachers  who  have  had 
fine  college  training  stand  out  like  lighthouses  on  a 
rocky  coast.  The  material  is  there;  it  is  for  lack  of 
its  development  that  the  people  perish  in  storms  of 
emotionalism  divorced  from  morality.  Highly-trained 
social  workers  are  necessary;  and  the  fine  efficiency 
of  those  already  at  work  should  silence  every  doubt 
as  to  the  Negro's  ability  for  this  work.  They  are 
proving  their  ability  under  the  National  League  on 
Urban  Conditions  Among  Negroes  in  both  North  and 
South ;  and  under  the  auspices  of  some  Southern  City 
Federations  of  Women's  Clubs ;  of  the  Women's  Mis- 
sionary Council  of  the  M.  E.  Church,  South ;  of  many 
Northern  churches;  of  the  Jeanes  Foundation,  and  of 
at  least  one  Southern  city  government.  Colleges  there 
must  certainly  be. 

But  the  1,500  college  students  should  not  be  scat- 
tered through  institutions  where  90%  of  the  pupils  are 
in  elementary  and  secondary  work:  the  Report  hopes 
for  concentration  of  college  work  in  a  few  highly- 
equipped  institutions  only;  and  for  the  rest  to  centre 
on  preparing  teachers  for  the  public  schools  trained  in 


AMONG    NEGRO   LABORERS  133 

history,  elementary  science,  pedagogy,  agriculture, 
industries,  hygiene,  sanitation  and  community  better- 
ment. 

Further  Teacher-training 

All  schools  for  negroes  put  together,  however,  can 
supply  only  a  small  number  of  the  teachers  urgently 
needed.  For  the  great  present  emergency  the  Slater 
Board,  under  the  direction  of  a  Southern  man,  has 
worked  out  a  plan  of  co-operation  with  State  and 
county  educational  boards  by  which  one  school  in  a 
county  may  be  made  an  eight-grade  school,  superior 
teachers  engaged,  and,  in  addition  to  the  eight  grades 
taught,  simple  courses  given  in  the  subjects  enume- 
rated in  the  last  paragraph.  The  General  Education 
Board  is  also  co-operating  with  Southern  State  au- 
thorities in  this  work.  It,  and  the  rural,  industrial,  and 
community  betterment  work  done  by  Negroes  under 
the  Jeanes  Foundation,  should  have  the  intelligent  co- 
operation of  the  Christian  and  patriotic  South.  The 
task  is  too  great  for  any  one  section  or  set  of  agencies. 
As  we  learn  to  work  together,  North  and  South,  white 
and  black,  Christians,  philanthropists,  patriots,  the 
work  will  be  done  without  waste  or  overlapping,  and 
with  more  and  more  efficiency,  to  the  upbuilding  of 
our  common  country  and  of  the  kingdom  of  God 
among  us. 

Trained  Preachers  Needed 

No  one  more  emphasizes  this  need  than  the  educated 
Negroes,  ministers  included.    There   are   a    very    few 


134  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

theological  schools  for  them;  more  or  less  practical 
courses  are  offered  in  several  institutions ;  and  three 
Southern  churches — Presbyterian,  Methodist  and  Bap- 
tist— have  long  acknowledged  their  obligation  as 
Christians  to  assist  in  this  work.  The  need,  however,  is 
as  great  as  for  properly-trained  teachers ;  and  at  the 
recent  quadrennial  meeting  of  the  Federal  Council  of 
Churches  plans  were  recommended  for  closer  co- 
operation between  white  and  colored  churches  through 
bi-racial  local  ministerial  meetings,  with  consideration 
of  and  co-operation  in  meeting  local  needs  and  prob- 
lems ;  for  the  holding  of  large  numbers  of  preachers'  in- 
stitutes yearly,  in  which  courses  in  the  Bible  should 
be  given  by  wThite  and  colored  ministers,  and  also 
courses  in  hygiene,  sanitation  and  community  work. 
The  Southern  Methodist  Church  has  been  trying  out 
this  plan  for  three  or  four  years  with  real  success ;  and 
it  is  hoped  that  some  adequate,  concerted  effort  may 
soon  be  made. 

Conditions  in  the  North 

The  "Negro  problem"  in  the  North  is  even  more 
purely  urban  than  it  is  rural  in  the  South,  and  because 
most  of  the  Negroes  are  newcomers  into  slum  condi- 
tions already  established  for  other  races  it  should  be 
easier  there  to  see  the  so-called  Negro  problem  for 
what  it  really  is — the  human  problem  of  the  poor,  the 
unfortunate,  the  ignorant,  the  unfriended,  the  weak. 
In  every  Northern  city,  as  in  those  of  the  South,  there 
are  educated,  capable  colored  men  and  women  who 
are  doing  what  they  can  to  help  these  less  fortunate 


AMONG    NEGRO    LABORERS  135 

of  their  people.  North  and  South,  Christian  whites 
should  come  in  touch  with  these  leaders  and  give 
both  sympathy  and  help.  Perhaps  one  of  the  finest 
instances  of  this  form  of  social  service  is  that  of  the 
co-operation  between  the  white  and  colored  Women's 
Civic  Clubs  of  Baltimore.  A  committee  from  the 
white  club,  headed  by  the  daughter  of  a  former  presi- 
dent of  Johns  Hopkins,  meets  regularly  with  a  com- 
mittee from  the  colored  club,  and  the  two  organiza- 
tions are  working  side  by  side  toward  the  same  fine 
ends — better  homes,  better  children,  wider  opportu- 
nities and  greater  happiness  for  all  the  people  of  the 
city. 

The  National  League  on  Urban  Conditions  Among 
Negroes,  composed  of  Northern  and  Southern  whites 
and  blacks,  with  headquarters  in  New  York  City,  has 
organized  work  and  trained  workers  in  a  number  of 
cities  of  both  sections.  They  seek  the  co-operation 
of  Christian  white  people,  and  often  find,  as  in  Nash- 
ville, Tenn.,  their  largest  opportunity  in  the  backing 
of  white  churchwomen  and  laymen.  They  are  doing 
fine  work  in  New  York,  Philadelphia,  Detroit  and 
other  places.  Organizations  such  as  this  must  be 
fostered  and  given  the  co-operation  of  our  missionary 
forces.  It  is  not  enough,  North  or  South,  to  do  things 
for  the  Negro;  we  must  do  things  with  the  Negro  if 
we  arc  to  be  honest  representatives  of  Jesus  Christ. 

The  Obligation  of  Women 

Women  are  the  centripetal  forces  of  the  human 
race;    the    home-makers,  the    life-bearers,    the    chil>!- 


136  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

keepers,  and  no  one  group  of  mothers  in  any  commu- 
nity or  nation  can  keep  their  own  safe  without  safe- 
guarding all.  Vice  and  disease  are  as  democratic  as 
death  itself.  The  real  heart  of  the  race  problem  is  in 
the  attitude  of  the  privileged  woman  to  the  unprivi- 
leged ;  and  God  has  so  woven  us  all  into  his  great  web 
of  life  that  if  we  fail  in  our  duty  to  these  poorest 
women  and  girls  and  homes,  our  own  sons  and  daugh- 
ters must  pay  the  penalty  for  our  neglect.  We  must 
see  women  as  women  first,  and  afterward  as  of  this 
race  or  that.  Justice  before  the  law  for  all  men  alike 
— that  Christian  America  must  achieve  if  she  fights 
with  honor  this  war  for  human  freedom ;  opportunity 
for  every  child  of  every  race — this  human  right  we 
must  secure  for  Negroes  as  for  others  if  we  are  to 
be  a  Christian  nation.  But  fundamental  to  both  these 
things  lies  respect  for  womanhood  as  such.  To  those 
who  have  glimpsed  something  of  their  struggle,  the 
fight  of  Christian  colored  women  for  the  purity  and 
safety  of  colored  girls  is  one  of  the  most  moving 
things  to  be  found  in  America.  Who  can  help  them 
but  the  Christian  white  women?  And  women  belong 
together ;  God  has  appointed  it  so.  There  is  no  stand- 
ard but  a  common  standard,  no  security  but  a  com- 
mon security,  no  right  but  a  common  right.  Let  us 
stand  for  that,  in  our  own  hearts,  in  the  minds  of  our 
children,  in  our  homes,  and  in  our  public  and  church 
life.  Thus  shall  we,  too,  fight  the  battle  of  the  world's 
freedom  and  lift  our  country,  even  a  little,  toward  that 
far  high  democracy  of  Jesus  Christ 

"Toward  which  the  whole  creation  moves." 


V 

IN  LUMBER  CAMPS  AND  MINES 

MIRIAM  L.  WOODBERRY 


Surely  there  is  a  vein  for  the  silver,  and  a  place  for  the  gold 
where  they  find  it.  Iron  is  taken  out  of  the  earth  and  brass  is 
molten  out  of  the  stone.  As  for  the  earth,  out  of  it  cometh 
bread ;  and  under  it  is  turned  up  as  it  were  fire. — Job  28 :  1,  2,  5, 
28. 

What  is  the  wisdom  taught  of  the  trees? 
Something  of  energy,  something  of  ease ; 
Steadfastness  rooted  in  passionless  peace. 

Life-giving  verdure  to  upland  and  glen, 
Graces — compelling  the  praises  of  men, 
Freedom — that  bends  to  the  eagle  and  wren. 

Largess — expanding  in  ripeness  and  size, 
Shadow — that  shelters  the  foolish  and  wise, 
Patience  that  bows  'neath  all  winds  of  the  skies. 

Uprightness — standing  for  truth  like  a  tower; 
Dignity — symbol   of  honor  and  power ; 
Beauty  that  blooms  in  the  ultimate  flower. 

Stephen   Henry  Thayer, 
Pulp  and  Paper  Magazine. 


V 
IN  LUMBER  CAMPS  AND  MINES 

Lumber  Camps 

It  is  a  far  cry  from  1848  when  Henry  W.  Longfellow 

wrote  in  the  first  verse  of  "Evangeline"  his  fascinating 

introduction  to  our  forests — 

"This  is  the  forest  primeval, 
The  murmuring  pines  and  the  hemlocks, 
Bearded  with  moss,  in  garments  green, 
Indistinct  in  the  twilight, 
Stand  like  druids  of  old, 
With  voices  sad  and  prophetic. 
Stand  like  harpers  hoar, 
With  beards  that  rest  on  their  bosoms" 

to  the  ringing  appeal  in  one  of  our  scientific  magazines 
for  the  United  States  Government  to  appropriate 
money  to  be  expended  in  aeroplanes  for  the  patrolling 
of  our  national  reserve  forests.  During  that  time  the 
poetry  of  the  woods,  enveloping  the  life  of  the  birds, 
the  customs  and  warfare  of  the  wild  beasts,  the  more 
fascinating  historic  days  of  Indian  warfare,  has  grad- 
ually succumbed  to  the  steady  song  of  the  woodman's 
axe,  invariably  followed  by  the  sudden  springing  into 
view  of  the  huge  saw  mills,  a  few  great  industrial 
cities,  but  more  often  miles  and  miles  and  miles  of 

139 


140  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

waste  timber  sections  and  the  weird,  unsightly  spaces 
of  logged  off  land. 

We  usually  think  of  our  timber  resources  and  forests 
as  located  on  our  northern  border,  stretching  from 
Maine  to  Washington;  but  all  States  in  the  Union,  with 
the  exception  of  Nebraska,  have  lumber  industries, 
ranging  from  Washington,  Wisconsin,  Virginia  and 
Louisiana,  where  wage-earners  are  employed  in  log- 
ging camps  and  mills,  numbering  not  over  43,000  or 
less  than  30,000,  to  Rhode  Island,  Kansas,  Nevada  and 
Utah,  each  state  averaging  less  than  one  hundred  men 
on  pay-roll. 

The  very  nature  of  the  work  makes  the  compiling  of 
statistics  of  little  value  except  to  open  the  eyes  of  the 
church  to  the  importance  of  doing  transient  work  and 
being  willing  to  furnish  leadership  to  a  constantly 
moving  people.  In  five  years'  time  Washington  ad- 
vanced from  the  fifth  to  the  first,  Louisiana  advanced 
from  the  seventh  to  the  third,  Mississippi  advanced 
from  the  thirteenth  to  the  ninth,  Wisconsin  dropped 
from  the  second  to  the  fifth,  Pennsylvania  dropped 
from  the  fourth  to  the  sixth,  and  Minnesota  dropped 
from  the  sixth  to  the  tenth. 

Labor  Facts  That  Affect  the  Background  and  Scope 
of  Christian  Activities 

The  work  in  the  camps  is  an  outdoor  problem  offer- 
ing no  opportunities  to  women  except  cooking.  The 
children  belong  to  the  few  lumberjacks  and  foremen 
who  must  command  the  outposts. 

The  work  in  the  saw  mills  is  an  indoor  problem, 


IN    LUMBER   CAMPS   AND    MINES  141 

offering  various  types  of  employment  to  women  and 
children.     The  last  census  prints  this  table : 

Women  employed  in  saw  mills  and  lumber  camps 43.7% 

"    planing   mills    32.2% 

"   packing  box   factories 24.1% 

Children  under  16  years  of  age,  saw  mills  and  logging..  54.4% 

"  "        "       "      "      "      planing   mills    18.2% 

"        "       "      "      "     packing  box  factories...  27.4% 

The  number  of  women  employed  shows  compar- 
atively little  change  during  the  last  decade.  The  num- 
ber of  children  employed  shows  a  decrease  for  the 
decade  as  a  whole ;  although  somewhat  larger  in  1909 
than  in  1904,  the  proportion  which  they  formed  of  the 
total  has  however  decreased  during  each  intercensal 
period. 

The  maximum  employment  of  wage  earners  in  the 
logging  camps  of  the  country  takes  place  during  the 
winter,  and  in  the  lumber  mills  during  the  summer 
and  fall.  Conditions  with  respect  to  distribution  of 
employment  during  the  year  differ  widely,  however,  in 
different  sections  of  the  country.  In  the  Western 
States  most  of  the  logging  is  done  during  the  winter 
months  while  the  lumber  mills  run  throughout  the  year, 
being  usually  somewhat  more  active  during  the  summer 
than  during  the  winter.  In  the  Southern  States,  on  the 
other  hand,  both  logging  and  mill  work  continue  with 
little  change  or  interruption  throughout  the  year. 
Thus  there  were  more  than  four  times  as  many  wage 
earners  employed  in  the  logging  camps  of  New  Eng- 
land in  December  as  were  employed  in  July  of  the 
same  year.     In  the  logging  operations  of  the  five  states 


142  THE    PATH    OF   LABOR 

bordering  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  there  were  only  7.8  per 
cent,  more  wage  earners  employed  in  December  than 
July. 

A  Day  in  a  Lumber  Camp 

This  really  begins  the  day  before,  with  a  train  trip 
through  the  logged  off  stump  land  that  always  pre- 
cedes a  lumber  camp.  A  night  in  a  small  house  very 
near  a  large  saw  mill,  with  an  alarm  clock  that  goes 
off  very  promptly  at  a  quarter  of  five  A.  M.  Then  a 
stumbling  walk  over  the  stumps  and  planked  paths 
of  the  mill  settlement  into  the  large  boarding  house 
for  a  hearty  breakfast  with  one  hundred  men. 

The  foreman  of  the  wood's  crew  is  the  host  and  I 
am  next  introduced  to  the  fireman  and  the  engineer, 
for  all  visitors  depend  upon  their  courtesy.  The 
engineer  must  keep  his  seat  on  the  engine,  but  the 
fireman  can  stand  and  surrender  his  to  a  guest.  We 
push  "empties"  (unloaded  freight  cars)  ten  miles  back 
into  the  woods  and  penetrate  the  deep,  majestic  tim- 
ber lands.  It  seems  sacrilegious.  One  feels  that  wild 
beasts,  birds  and  Indians  belong  in  that  environment, 
but  that  this  modern,  scientific  outfit  spells  mischief. 
It  is  destruction.  Destruction  of  the  forest  in  order  to 
construct  the  city. 

There  are  four  camps  to  visit.  No.  1  is  about 
deserted.  The  timber  is  cut  and  most  of  the  little 
buildings,  built  on  sled  foundations,  are  about  to  be 
moved.  No.  2  is  in  the  full  program  of  activity,  with 
its  cook  house,  its  bunk  house  and  a  few  homes  for 
the  families  of  the  men  who  must  be  stationed  at  the 


IN    LUMBER    CAMPS   AND    MINES  143 

outposts.  At  No.  3,  where  the  men  have  been  cutting 
for  two  weeks,  we  stayed  while  the  train  returned  to 
the  settlement  with  its  empties  loaded  with  logs,  and 
for  three  hours  watched  the  timber  falling.  Trees 
three  hundred  years  old,  felled  in  thirty  minutes  by 
two  men,  two  axes  and  one  saw  nine  feet  long.  Just 
as  the  tree  is  ready,  the  men  at  the  saws  jump  aside, 
and  the  word  "Timber!"  rings  through  the  woods. 
Everybody  stops  work.  There  is  a  soft,  singing  noise 
which  gradually  emerges  into  a  crash,  and  a  monarch 
has  fallen,  but  only  for  a  few  minutes'  repose.  Ropes 
belonging  to  a  donkey  engine  are  quickly  flung  out 
into  the  air,  caught  and  attached,  and  our  tree  is  soon 
swinging  through  the  heavens,  this  time  in  a  hori- 
zontal position,  and  with  a  few  deft  motions  by  the 
men,  a  few  quick  signals,  finds  itself  securely  loaded 
with  six  or  more  similar  logs,  and  traveling  towards  the 
settlement. 

We  will  travel  with  this  log  and  its  companions, 
stopping  at  camp  No.  4.  This  morning  it  was  dense 
woodland.  Now  a  small,  cleared  place  has  appeared. 
Ropes,  wire  and  tackle  are  attached  to  a  tree,  a  small 
donkey  engine  has  been  located,  three  trees  have 
already  fallen,  and  camp  No.  4  is  born. 

We  pass  the  burned  shack  of  a  lonely  woodsman, 
see  the  remains  of  a  coffee  pot,  soldered  by  the  fire 
on  to  a  piece  of  the  stove,  the  charred  and  twisted 
pieces  of  furniture,  and  wonder  if  the  occupant  escaped 
and  where  he  fled  for  shelter  from  a  forest  fire.  But 
one  also  feels  sorry  for  the  dignified  tree  speeding 
towards  civilization:  a  cold   plunge  will   introduce    it 


144  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

to  the  river  and  a  slow,  drifting  journey  will  take  it 
to  the  mill  provided  it  escapes  the  horrors  of  a  river 
jam.  At  this  point  one  can  introduce  the  word  "Mis- 
sionary," for  the  land  left  behind,  pruned  of  its  great 
trees,  shows  a  tangle  of  sticks,  stumps  and  slashings, 
which  will  soon  be  opened  by  some  enterprising  real 
estate  agent  for  settlement.  The  man  who  buys  this 
logged  off  land  will  know  the  meaning  of  the  word 
"toil."  Ten  dollars'  worth  of  dynamite  is  often  used 
to  blow  up  one  stump,  and  the  settler,  who  clears  the 
land,  is  the  true  pioneer. 

At  this  point,  also,  comes  the  dawning  of  permanent 
missionary  work,  for  the  saw  mill  town  usually  re- 
mains fifteen  or  twenty  years,  with  a  population  never 
less  than  five  hundred,  offering  every  opportunity  for 
service.  If  the  camp  is  in  a  "wet"  State,  the  work  of 
the  lumberjack  preacher  is  primarily  laboring  with  the 
wreckage  caused  by  the  saloon.  At  one  camp,  a  little 
girl  came  up  to  us  and,  with  the  frankness  of  childhood, 
looked  into  the  pastor's  face  and  said,  "May  I  hang 
around  you  all  day?  Last  Sunday  they  got  me  so 
drunk  I  was  sick  until  Wednesday."  This  minister 
had  only  visited  the  camp  once  before,  a  year  previous, 
and  the  child  had  remembered  the  little  Sunday-school 
service,  the  simple  singing  and  the  picture  card,  which 
mean  so  little  to  our  own  children.  If  a  camp  is  in  a 
"dry"  State  the  opportunities  for  service  cannot  be 
exaggerated.  A  man  who  has  spent  long  days  in  the 
woods  and  in  the  mills  enjoys  reading,  checkers,  and 
simple  moving  picture  exhibits,  while  the  one  to  whom 


■  .f.v    of  Miss  M.    H 

'  "I'M'    NT      -  -.      \  BER      (    AMP 

I.     Working   in   the  "Deep    i  sawmili    Town,    B   km    M>    .   1917 

;•       gAWMU  is  I.I       •.;  Bl  R      I  v  P 

'■     -Sl  i I  ""<  si .  I  .1  ■■  i   Bi    i  di  rc    i  .    Si  rTLEMENT  6.     Si  nday    Schooi     in    t  Li      bei 


IN    LUMBER    CAMPS   AND    MINES  145 

drinking  is  relaxation  thinks  his  day  is  not  quite  complete 
without  a  brutal  fight. 

Missionary  Work 

The  constantly  changing  location  of  the  camps 
probably  accounts  for  the  dearth  of  descriptive  litera- 
ture, as  a  small  forest  can  be  demolished  by  one  hun- 
dred men  while  an  article  is  being  written,  set  up  in 
type  and  distributed — but  wonderful  work  has  been 
done. 

To  the  Presbyterians  belongs  the  credit  of  being  the 
only  denomination  that  has  kept  a  Secretary  for  fifteen 
years  wrho  has  general  oversight  of  all  lumber  camp 
districts,  with  four  general  missionaries  under  him 
who  have  no  churches,  but  are  free  to  go  from  camp 
to  camp,  with  a  pack  on  their  backs.  They  visit,  call 
on  the  wounded,  become  acquainted  with  the  men, 
hold  services,  social  and  religious.  To  them  are  due  in 
great  measure  the  cleaned  up  camps,  sanitary  bunks, 
spring  beds  and  wholesome  recreations  of  the  present. 
The  first  points  are  not  so  much  in  conversion  of  men 
as  in  improved  comforts  and  social  conditions. 

Three  years  ago  the  Onalaska  Lumber  Co.  pur- 
chased 34,000  acres  of  timber  land.  They  erected  a 
small  mill  and  shortly  after  cut  and  sawed  enough 
timber  to  erect  a  large  mill  and  build  a  town.  A  large 
company  store,  the  company  offices  and  homes 
emerged  with  the  lightning  speed  of  American  indus- 
try, and  in  three  years  to  a  day  the  community  opened 
its  doors  to  the  settler.  The  church  was  also  there, 
with    a    pastor    and    his    wife    in    the    field  —  only    one 


146  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

church,  denominational  in  name,  community  in  spirit. 

The  Baptists,  in  addition  to  a  large  program  of  work 
in  many  States,  have  a  most  unique  work  that  is  "launched 
by  a  launch."  A  man  and  his  wife,  who  combine  the 
varied  talents  of  preaching,  singing,  writing,  cooking  and 
navigating,  live  on  a  small  steamer,  and  minister,  not  only 
to  a  long  line  of  little  rural  Sunday-schools  on  the  Pacific 
coast,  but  to  the  lumber  camps  that  border  the  large 
shipping  ports. 

The  Congregationalists  have  centered  more  of  their 
work  in  the  logged  off  land  settlements  in  the  Middle 
West  in  furnishing  foreign-speaking  pastors  for  the 
settlements  which  surround  the  ship-building  industries 
of  the  Northwest,  and  establishing  one  college  with  an 
academy  department  that  ministers  primarily  to  the  chil- 
dren whose  fathers  and  mothers  have  been  the  pioneers 
who  have  subdued  the  wilderness. 

All  the  denominations  have  a  devoted  band  of  Sunday- 
school  missionaries  whose  untiring  services  have  checked 
crime,  saved  life,  and  helped  to  swing  many  a  camp  into 
righteousness. 

In  Mines 

The  longing  to  obtain  and  the  willingness  to  seek  for 
hidden  treasure  lies  dominant  in  every  race  and  tribe 
and  is  the  propelling  force  back  of  most  of  the  voyages 
of  the  past  and  the  industries  of  the  present.  The  ro- 
mantic stories  of  America's  marvelous  resources  have 
brought  the  people  of  the  world  to  these  shores,  and 
every  new  invention  of  science,  or  the  perfection  of 


IN    LUMBER    CAMPS   AND    MINES  147 

larger  and  stronger  instruments,  only  serves  to  locate 
or  bring  to  the  surface  more  material  wealth. 

Referring  to  dry  statistics,  we  find  that  in  forty-one 
out  of  forty-eight  of  the  states  included  in  the  United 
States,  the  value  of  products  taken  from  the  mines  yields 
annually  over  the  million  mark  per  state ;  Pennsyl- 
vania leading  with  coal,  California  and  Colorado  fol- 
lowing with  gold  and  silver,  Montana  producing  zinc, 
lead,  silver,  copper  and  iron,  and  Alaska  unmeasured 
and  unfathomed  riches.  Already  jewelers  are  begin- 
ning to  get  Oriental  prices  for  the  Montana  sapphire, 
the  Texas  diamond,  the  Wyoming  amethyst,  the  Cali- 
fornia opal  and  the  Alaska  garnet. 

The  term  "mine,"  in  the  commercial  world,  repre- 
sents a  distinct  mining  operation,  one  or  more  of 
which  may  be  controlled  by  some  operator.  In  many 
minerals,  such  as  precious  stones,  small  placer  gold 
mining,  etc.,  the  mining  operations  are  not  carried  on 
continuously  at  the  same  locality.  The  term  "oper- 
ator" represents  the  individual  or  company  which  con- 
trols the  mine.  As  a  large  percentage  of  gold,  silver, 
copper,  lead  and  zinc  are  often  obtained  from  the  same 
ores,  the  communities  where  these  operations  arc  car- 
ried on  present  the  largest  and  most  complicated 
human  problem. 

The  size  of  a  cam])  varies  from  the  lonely  Alaskan 
prospector,  who  is  often  seen  panning  for  gold  on  the 
banks  of  the  river  or  digging  in  the  streets  of  a  now 
town,  to  the  biggest  mining  proposition  in  the  world, 
located   at   Butte,   Montana,   which   may   serve   as   an 


148  THE    PATH    OF   LABOR 

illustration  of  a  mining  town,  though  on  a  larger  scale 
than  any  other. 

Butte,  Montana 

Beginning  with  one  small  mine,  known  as  the 
"Perch  of  the  Devil,"  this  camp  has  become  a  city, 
with  a  reputation  that  extends  around  the  world.  Its 
fabulous  wealth  of  copper  is  beyond  the  glories  pic- 
tured in  Aladdin's  palace  and  it  will  prove  the  central 
interest  of  all  industrial  problems  for  fifty  years  to 
come. 

Butte  has  a  population  of  ninety  thousand  people. 
Of  this,  one-quarter  are  single  men  who  come  from 
everywhere,  as  some  one  has  said,  "for  whom  nobody 
cares,  nobody  weeps  and  nobody  watches."  Nine  hun- 
dred miles  of  underground  treasure  has  been  blocked 
out,  and  at  the  present  speed  will  take  twenty  thou- 
sand men,  working  on  three  shifts  of  eight  hours  each, 
one  hundred  years  to  mine.  So  Butte  is  on  the  map 
to  stay. 

The  life  of  the  city  is  divided  into  three  periods  of 
eight  hours  each ;  one-third  of  its  population  is  at 
work,  one-third  at  play  and  one-third  asleep  each  hour 
of  the  twenty-four  in  a  day.  Just  as  many  people  are 
buying  tickets  for  the  theatre  at  quarter  of  eight  in 
the  morning  as  there  are  at  quarter  of  eight  in  the 
evening.  In  1916,  17  per  cent,  of  the  population  was 
in  jail — mostly  for  short  sentences  often  repeated. 
The  city  boasted  the  largest  bar  in  America — situated 
right  in  the  center  of  the  town,  keeping  sixteen  bar- 
tenders busy.     It  also  was  the  home  of  the  smallest 


IN    LUMBER    CAMPS   AND    MINES  149 

restaurant — a   tiny  table,   four  plates  and   one   cook 
doing  business  night  and  day. 

Everything  that  is  produced  in  the  city  goes  out; 
everything  that  is  consumed  must  be  brought  in.  The 
output  is  distributed  mostly  in  the  East,  and  enriches 
home  life,  particularly  in  Boston  and  New  York.  The 
question  which  naturally  puts  itself  to  us  is,  what  can 
the  church  do  under  such  conditions?  In  this  com- 
munity, that  produces  one-fourth  of  all  the  copper 
which  goes  to  make  ammunition  for  the  allies,  with  a 
cosmopolitan  population  of  which  fully  one-half  is 
militantly  pro-German,  where  the  company  have 
militia  stationed  to  restrain  the  conflicting  passions  of 
antagonistic  races  in  the  mines,  one  minister  comes 
forward  with  this  declaration :  "The  most  important 
influence  must  be  the  steadying  power  of  the  Gospel." 
Churches  in  Butte  are  trying  to  afford  a  spiritual  bal- 
ance wheel  for  this  seething  mining  camp.  Every 
evening  while  individual  affairs  are  coming  to  a  climax, 
special  services  are  held  in  which  a  spiritual  interpre- 
tation is  given  of  the  significance  of  the  flag  behind  the 
pulpit.  Within  one  year  two  miracles  have  been  per- 
formed— the  red-light  district  has  been  closed,  and  dur- 
ing the  dramatic  temperance  campaign  for  the  State 
of  Montana,  Butte  was  the  only  city  that  went  dry. 

Challenge  of  the  Coeur  d'Alenes 

In  Northern  Central  Idaho  we  face  the  great  chal- 
lenge of  the  Coeur  d'Alenes.  The  town  of  Wallace  is 
absolutely  unique  in  its  geographical  situation.  It  is 
placed  like  the  hub  of  a  wheel,  from  which  radiate 


150  THE    PATH    OF   LABOR 

twenty  mining  gulches,  the  inhabitants  of  which  turn 
to  Wallace  for  supplies,  inspiration  and  recreation.  A 
year's  study  could  easily  be  given  to  this  most  unusual 
and  strategic  phase  of  our  industrial  life.  The  follow- 
ing extract  from  the  pen  of  a  local  pastor  will  intro- 
duce us  to  the  challenge: 

"Those  of  you  who  have  formed  your  mental  picture  of  a 
western  mining  camp  from  reading  the  novels  of  Rex  Beach  or 
attending  the  movies  may  be  surprised  to  hear  of  conditions  as 
they  actually  exist  in  one  of  the  largest  lead-producing  centers 
of  our  country. 

The  Coeur  d'Alene  Mining  District  occupies  the  County  of 
Shoshone  in  the  "Panhandle"  of  Idaho,  lying  next  to  Montana 
on  the  upper  waters  of  the  Coeur  d'Alene  River.  The  center 
of  the  district  is  the  city  of  Wallace,  a  beautiful,  progressive, 
busy  town  of  about  5,000,  which  has  attractive  homes,  excellent 
schools,  hospitals,  library,  and  paved  streets  which  are  thronged 
Avith  automobiles. 

The  first  and  truest  impression  one  gets  of  the  place  is  that 
of  prosperity.  Everyone  is  making  money  or  is  here  to  make 
money.  The  district  is  immensely  rich.  Last  year  $33,000,000 
worth  of  ore  was  taken  out  from  the  hills  and  over  $12,000,000 
of  this  was  clear  profit  to  the  mining  companies.  Wages  are 
high.  At  present  a  bonus,  varying  with  the  price  of  lead,  is 
paid  to  all  the  workmen  employed  by  the  mining  companies. 
This,  now  equal  to  $1.25,  added  to  the  standard  wage  of  $3.50, 
makes  a  mucker's  wages  $4.75  for  a  day's  work.  Living  expenses 
are  correspondingly  high,  however,  and  it  is  doubtful  if  most  of 
the  men  are  able  to  save  a  large  part  of  their  income ;  but  to 
receive  and  spend  a  good  deal  of  money  gives  at  least  the 
feeling  of  prosperity. 

The  spirit  of  the  region  is  the  spirit  of  the  miner,  and  the  spirit 
of  the  miner  is  that  of  the  gambler.  The  early  prospector  staked 
his  life  and  grub-stake  against  a  belt  full  of  "dust."  The  present 
miner  risks  the  chance  of  being  crushed  by  falling  rock  or 
smothered  by  underground  fire  for  the  high  wages.  Nearly 
everyone  in  the  region  owns  stock  in  some  mine  or  prospect. 
The  minister's  salary  (with  the  exception  of  the  present  one), 
the  school  teacher's  savings,  the  doctor's  fees,  the  workman's 
wages,  the  stenographer's  pay,  the  housewife's  pin  money,  even 
the  school-children's  nickels  all  go  to  buy  mining  stock,  and  the 
big  blackboards  with  their  changing  figures,  which  adorn  nearly 
every  other  window  in  the  business  part  of  the  town,  are  watched 


IN    LUMBER    CAMPS    AND    MINES  151 

daily  with  feverish  interest.  A  "hasher"  in  a  cheap  restaurant 
told  me  that  he  made  and  lost  $7,000  in  one  year.  A  young 
lady  teaching  in  our  Sunday-school  entered  my  .study  one  day 
and  joyfully  announced  that  through  a  tip  given  her  by  the 
broker  for  whom  she  worked  she  had  "made"  $14  the  day  before. 
There  are  perhaps  a  half  dozen  men  in  Wallace  who  a  few  years 
ago  were  common  workingmen  and  today  are  worth  millions. 
There  are  probably  thousands  of  others  who  have  left  their 
fortunes  in  a  hole  in  the  hills  and  gone  away  "busted,"  but  they 
are  forgotten.  Prosperity  is  the  drawing  power  of  the  region. 
Everyone  who  comes  here  is  drawn  by  the  lure  of  gold,  and 
his  greed  is  fed  until  it  becomes  an  all-absorbing  passion,  crowd- 
ing out  for  the  time,  at  least,  all  other  and  higher  interests. 

The  reason  that  I  am  presenting  this  picture  is  not  to  boom 
the  sale  of  western  real  estate,  but  to  show  if  I  can  that  I'ros- 
perity  is  a  greater  obstacle  to  the  work  of  the  Gospel  than 
Poverty.  You  have  often  heard  the  plea  made  for  the  poor 
Home  Missionary  with  his  pitiful  salary  of  $600  or  less,  paid 
largely  in  cord  wood  and  unmarketable  vegetables,  whose 
measly  stipend  has  been  augmented  by  the  help  of  a  lone  cow 
"which  cow  is  now  dead  and  the  poor  baby  deprived  of  his  neces- 
sary milk  and  the  overworked  wife  sick  in  bed  and  won't  you 
all  give  a  few  pennies  and  send  some  clothes  in  the  Christmas 
box?"  Well  do  I  know  the  truth  of  this  picture  for  I  have  often 
worn  the  welcome  garments  from  those  blessed  Home  Missionary 
boxes,  and  my  father  brought  up  a  family  of  seven  on  a  Home 
Missionary's  salary,  but  this  is  not  the  story  of  a  dead  cow 
or  a  sick  baby.  Rather,  I  want  you  to  see  that  a  people  K'ven 
over  heart  and  soul  to  the  pursuit  of  quickly  gained  wealth  are 
harder  to  reach  with  the  Gospel  call  than  those  in  the  grip  of 
poverty  or  even  starvation.  Some  one  has  described  them  as 
"a  people  whose  God  is  Gold  and  whose  hope  is  a  hole  in  the 
ground." 

I  do  not  want  you  to  think  of  my  people  as  altogether  Godless 
and  ruled  by  greed  and  living  in  the  lap  of  luxury.  While  they 
are  here  in  the  pursuit  of  wealth  it  docs  not  follow  that  they 
keep  possession  of  it  all.  The  stock-  of  most  of  the  paying 
mines  are  held  now  by  eastern  people.  The  companies  send  tlu-ir 
dividends  to  New  York  and  leave  their  dump-piles  here,  and  with 
these  dumps  are  left  a  large  number  of  economic  and 
problems  that  the  companies  have  not  been  aide  or  willing  to 
solve.  More  than  this,  these  people  are  not  greedy.  Their 
money-lust  has  been  fed  and  it  has  grown  prodigiously;  the 
chance  of  riches  has  given  tO  them  the  miner's  lever 
piety  may  be  due  to  your  poverty,  or  to  your  lack  of  opportunity 
to  get  great  wealth  quickly),  but  the  mining  people  are  pro 


152  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 


ially  generous  and  open  handed.  When  once  their  interest  is 
stirred  they  give  as  readily  as  they  get  and  penuriousness  is 
despised  and  almost  unknown  among  them.  In  the  last  drive 
for  the  Red  Cross  we  nearly  doubled  our  apportionment  and 
gave  five  times  as  much  per  capita  as  the  rest  of  the  country. 
They  are  often  careless  with  their  money.  Many  of  them  come 
from  the  best  homes  of  New  England  and  the  East,  from 
environments  of  culture  and  refinement  and  religion ;  lured  to  the 
Golden  West  by  dreams  of  sudden  wealth  they  leave  the  "im- 
pedimenta" of  religion  among  the  heirlooms  of  the  old  home- 
stead and  come  to  their  new  home  in  the  spirit  of  a  vacation, 
morally  and  religiously. 

There  is  a  corresponding  lack  of  permanence  in  the  feelings 
of  the  people.  As  soon  as  their  pile  is  made  or  they  have  struck 
it  rich  they  will  leave,  and  so  the  church  and  culture  and 
things  that  make  for  character  and  permanency  are  forced  to 
wait  while  they  rush  to  the  "killing  while  the  killing  is  good." 
Such  conditions  produce  a  shifting,  restless  population.  Half  of 
the  congregation  in  our  church  will  frequently  be  strangers.  We 
preach  to  a  procession  which  has  not  time  to  pause  and  listen. 
Of  the  6,000  young  men  in  the  mines  and  mills  I  doubt  if  a 
fraction  of  one  per  cent,  is  ever  touched  by  the  church  in  any 
way  at  all,  or  ever  made  aware  of  its  existence.  This  is  one 
community  that  is  not  overchurched.  If  all  the  population 
should  take  a  notion  to  go  to  church  at  the  same  time,  not  one- 
tenth  of  them  could  sit  down,  and  yet  we  are  seldom  crowded 
for  room. 

There  are  several  acute  social  problems  that  have  arisen  in 
such  conditions  as  these.  One  of  them  is  Homelessness.  A 
large  proportion  of  the  laboring  men  are  single  or  living  away 
from  their  families,  most  of  them  boarding  at  the  company 
"beaneries,"  and  the  crowded  conditions  of  most  of  the  mining 
camps  give  them  no  chance  whatever  for  any  physical  or  social 
recreation.  One  company  has  built  and  maintains  a  Y.  M.  C.  A., 
and  some  of  the  others  have  plans  underway  for  the  same 
kind  of  buildings  for  the  men. 

Another  social  problem  is  the  lack  of  the  Sabbath.  The  wheels 
never  stop.  In  mine  and  mill  the  work  goes  on  twenty-four 
hours  a  day,  seven  days  a  week,  fifty-two  weeks  a  year.  The 
men  work  in  three  shifts ;  the  morning  from  7  A.  M.  to  3  P.  M., 
afternoon  from  3  P.  M.  to  11  P.  M.,  and  "graveyard,"  from  11 
P.  M.  to  7  A.  M.  Every  two  weeks  a  man  changes  shift.  The 
housewives  will  be  able  to  realize  some  of  the  problems  this 
brings  to  a  home  where  there  are  also  children  to  be  fed  and 
sent  to  school.  With  the  exception  of  one  company — the  Bunker 
Hill-Sullivan — no  miner  in  the  district  ever  has  a  Sabbath  and 


IN    LUMBER   CAMPS   AND    MINES  153 


would  not  know  what  to  do  with  it  if  he  had  it. 

Working  under  such  conditions  the  men,  though  far  above  the 
average  in  alertness  and  intelligence,  become  rather  rough  and 
irresponsible  and  careless  of  human  life.  There  is,  or  was,  a  cer- 
tain kind  of  drill  used  in  mines  called  the  "Widow-maker,"  which 
is  guaranteed  to  kill  a  man  in  three  years  because  of  the  poison- 
ous dust  that  enters  his  lungs.  Yet  this  drill  was  extensively 
used  and  was  in  favor  among  the  men  because  of  its  ease  of 
handling  and  has  only  recently  been  made  illegal  by  a  law  drafted 
by  the  Treasurer  of  the  Wallace  Church. 

In  the  past,  the  Coeur  d'Alenes  have  been  the  seat  of  some  of 
the  most  violent  labor  troubles  in  the  history  of  our  country. 
The  Western  Federation  of  Miners,  so  well  remembered  for 
their  policy  of  dynamiting  back  in  1898,  had  their  headquarters 
at  the  little  town  of  Gem  for  years,  and  began  their  work  of 
terrorizing  here  and  at  Kellogg.  During  the  present  crisis  the 
men  have  remained  loyal  and  quiet,  due  partly  to  the  high  wages 
paid  and  to  the  presence  of  Government  troops  who  headed  off 
any  possible  agitation;  but  we  are  a  long  way  yet  from  having 
any  feeling  of  real  "brotherhood"  and  human  interest  between 
the  owners  and  the  workers  of  the  -mine.  How  to  create  such 
an  interest  between  a  company  whose  office  is  on  Broadway  and 
whose  stockholders  are  anywhere  under  heaven,  and  the  boys  in 
the  muck  here  in  the  Coeur  d'Alenes  is  a  problem  that  will  take 
more  than  the  Church  to  solve. 

Many  social  conditions  have  improved  greatly  in  the  last  few 
years.  State  prohibition  has  banished  the  saloon  and,  although 
bootlegging  is  common  since  it  is  but  a  few  hours'  walk  to 
Montana  and  a  notorious  town,  we  are  ready  to  testify  that 
the  worst  kind  of  prohibition  is  far  better  than  the  best  kind 
of  license,  and  heartily  hope  that  the  civilized  east  may  some 
time  come  up  to  us  in  this  respect.  Prostitution  has  until  very 
recently  been  legalized  and  preserved  with  tender  care  and  devo- 
tion. One  of  the  choicest  business  sites  in  the  heart  of  the  city 
of  Wallace  was  given  over  to  the  housing  of  about  100  girls  who 
were  fined  regularly  once  a  month  and  the  fines  paid  into  the 
school  fund;  every  industry  in  the  town  from  the  physician 
and  the  drug  store  to  the  laundry  and  the  church  profited 
directly  or  indirectly  from  their  presence.  It  was  only  through 
the  action  of  the  United  States  Government  for  the  pro- 
of the  soldiers  stationed  here  that  this  district  has  been  recently 
closed.  The  former  pastor  of  a  little  church  in  .  .  .  led  the 
fight  some  years  ago  for  closing  up  the  business  there.  He  won 
out  but  "he  had  to  leave  town  soon  after." 

This  problem  of  the  mining  district,  briefly  pictured,  our  church 
has  endeavored  to  take  up  somewhat  as  a  laboratory  experiment 


154  THE    PATH    OF   LABOR 


to  find  out  if  there  is  any  way  in  which  the  Church  of  Christ 
can  minister  to  these  dire  needs  and  bring  a  social  gospel  to 
bear  on  the  thousands  of  homeless,  restless  miners.  The  Sab- 
bathless week,  the  grumbling  labor  unrest  that  in  the  past  has 
been  a  festering  sore  threatening  the  very  heart  of  democracy, 
the  shifting,  restless,  gold-seeking  population,  the  indifference 
toward  the  church  and  even  religion  and  morals  present  some 
unsolved  problems;  to  the  experiment  we  have  tried  to  bring 
the  best  endeavor  of  our  local  and  national  denominational 
forces,  planning  to  unite  the  work  of  the  whole  district  sur- 
rounding Wallace  in  a  sort  of  larger  parish  with  an  adequate 
force  to  serve  its  varied  needs.  No  church  has  solved  this 
problem  as  yet.  No  work  in  such  a  mining  community  has 
been  permanent  and  far-reaching  though  many  times  there 
have  been  brilliant  and  sporadic  efforts  made.  We  have  no 
blazed  trail  to  follow,  but  we  must  try  and  find  a  way.  We 
cannot  afford  to  leave  such  a  challenge  unmet.  With  faith 
and  persistence  and  devotion  and  optimism  undaunted  we  must 
try  to  answer  the  need. 

So  far  the  church  has  had  some  success.  While  men  will 
barely  stop  to  listen,  the  boys  and  girls  are  more  easily  reached 
and  an  entering  wedge  in  social  service  has  been  started  by 
such  work  as  the  Boy  Scouts  and  Camp  Fire  Girls.  Last 
summer  we  had  eighty-five  in  a  Boy  Scout  Camp  for  two  weeks, 
a  most  successful  and  valuable  experiment  in  the  county-wide 
service  which  is  reaching  many  homes  that  the  church  has  not 
been  able  otherwise  to  touch.  Seventy-five  girls  enjoyed  a  camp 
of  a  week  at  a  nearby  lake,  and  our  little  Sunday-school  has  a 
half  dozen  clubs  for  the  young  people  that  have  proven  of 
value  in  directing  service  as  well  as  stimulating  interest.  The 
Sunday-school  has  grown  to  an  enrollment  of  over  200,  an 
increase  of  about  400%,  and  the  church  services  are  well 
attended.  The  big  problem  of  reaching  the  men  in  the  mines  is 
so  far  unsolved.  The  most  successful  effort  in  that  direction  is 
the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  at  Kellogg,  built  by  the  Bunker  Hill  and  Sullivan 
Mining  Company,  and  some  of  the  other  companies  are  planning 
work  similar  to  this. 

The  help  of  the  Home  Missionary  Society,  which  has  for  the 
past  two  years  met  the  salary  of  our  Church  Assistant,  has  been 
a  paying  investment  and  a  most  gracious  service  for  which  we 
are  deeply  grateful.  She  has  taken  comfort  and  fellowship  to 
many  homes,  has  been  an  inspiration  in  the  work  of  the  church, 
the  Sunday-school,  the  choir  and  among  the  girls  and  the 
young  people.  Aside  from  this  gift  the  field  has  cost  the  Society 
only  $90  for  the  two  years,  but  a  more  far-reaching  and  aggres- 
sive work  must  soon  be  undertaken,  especially  in  the  surrounding 


IN    LUMBER    CAMPS    AND    MINES  155 

camps,  and  another  man  added  to  the  working  force. 

We  can  make  no  promises  for  the  future.  The  conventional 
ways  of  measuring  success  may  be  entirely  lacking  in  our  work. 
The  procession  comes  and  goes.  We  must  often  sow  our  seed 
to  the  wind  and  trust  that  the  kingdom  prospers  though  our  owa 
organization  may  dwindle  and  fail.  The  price  of  lead  may  close 
up  half  of  the  mines,  or  a  bad  strike  might  close  up  all  of  them, 
and  just  then,  when  the  church  is  most  needed,  but  when  as  in 
the  past  we  have  generally  turned  our  backs  and  run  away,  we 
must  be  ready  to  double  our  efforts  and  stick  to  the  job  through 
thick  and  thin.  We  may  not  be  able  to  find  a  solution  for  many 
of  the  greatest  social  problems,  for  the  man  who  is  close  to  the 
fight  is  often  prevented  from  doing  much  in  that  direction,  but 
we  must  continue  to  try  and  must  stand  ready  to  enter  any  door 
of  service  as  soon  as  it  is  opened. 

When  the  recent  labor  troubles  incident  to  the  entering  of  our 
country  into  the  war,  began  to  threaten  some  of  the  great 
industries  on  which  the  army  was  dependent,  the  Government 
hurried  troops  here  to  prevent  any  trouble  or  agitation.  Bullets 
must  be  made  for  the  war  and  lead  must  be  produced  to  make 
them  and  so  at  any  cost  the  mines  must  be  protected.  If  it  is 
so  paramount  that  the  Government  take  these  steps  to  protect 
the  mines,  is  it  not  just  as  necessary  that  the  Church  take  ade- 
quate steps  to  protect  and  enrich  the  lives  of  the  men  in  the 
muck  who  produce  the  ore  and  the  lead? 

Coal  Mines 

No  study  of  America  is  complete  without  a  vision  of 
the  coal  regions  of  the  East,  especially  the  anthracite 
section  of  Pennsylvania,  which  for  years  has  proved 
the  power  house  of  national  wealth  and  comforts;  its 
resources  made  our  first  millionaires,  and  the  Welsh 
miners  who  first  handled  the  pick  brought  a  religious 
fervor,  a  knowledge  of  the  Scriptures,  a  love  of  debate, 
and  a  musical  ability  that  any  country  could  ill  afford 
to  lose. 

A  typical  mining  section  is  guarded  geographically 
by  the  huge  culm  piles,  that  seem  to  shut  out  the 
world  and  hem  in  the   inhabitants.     The  day  begins 


156  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

early,  as  the  first  rays  of  the  rising  sun  look  upon  a 
community  of  small  houses  sending  forth  its  masculine 
constituency,  and  by  seven  o'clock  hardly  a  man  is 
seen  outside  of  the  general  grocery  men,  mechanics, 
post-office  officials,  etc.  The  housework  is  soon 
accomplished,  and  the  children  off  to  school ;  the 
women  have  ample  time  for  neighborly  visiting,  and 
friendships  are  strong.  At  four  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon all  is  astir.  Supper  preparations  begin ;  large 
tubs  are  filled  with  hot  water,  and  the  men  return 
blackened  beyond  recognition  with  the  toil  of  the  day. 
Few  sights  are  more  fascinating  to  a  visitor  than  the 
transformation  when  the  men  appear,  devoid  of  the 
miner's  cap  and  light,  with  fair  skins  and  blue  eyes 
instead  of  the  black  begrimed  countenances  that  give 
an  unearthly  expression  to  the  best-looking  men 
among  them. 

In  visiting  a  mine  it  is  best  to  first  see  the  breakers ; 
here  small  boys  sit  over  rivers  of  rushing  coal  and  pick 
out  all  lumps  of  refuse  that  is  not  coal.  They  neither 
talk  nor  play,  for  the  roar  of  the  coal  is  deafening  and 
the  soot  renders  a  near  neighbor  invisible.  The  next 
promotion  is  to  drive  a  mule;  one  wonders  a  boy  ever 
lives  to  grow  up,  for  a  mule  is  not  interested  in  people 
under  the  best  of  circumstances,  and  when  he  lives 
underground,  miles  away  from  the  sunshine,  his  dis- 
position suffers.  But  a  boy  must  handle  a  mule  and 
not  be  handled  by  him.  The  next  graduation  is  to 
tend  the  gates.  Here  he  stands  and  watches  signals. 
Some  come  to  him  through  the  ear,  some  through  the 
eye,  and  on   his  prompt  obedience,   hang  the   lives  of 


IN    LUMBER    CAMPS    AND    MINES  157 

hundreds  of  men,  for  as  he  opens  and  shuts  the  doors, 
the  air  rushes  in  and  down  the  passages  where  the 
men  are  at  work.  After  this,  he  loads  coal;  then 
handles  dynamite.  There  is  one  other  promotion 
reserved  for  the  man  with  a  clear  eye,  a  steady  hand, 
and  a  nimble  foot — that  of  fire-boss.  When  you  wake 
in  the  night  and  hear  the  clock  strike  two,  breathe  a 
prayer  for  the  solitary  men  who  all  over  our  mining 
regions  are  dropping  into  the  center  of  the  earth. 
They  examine  all  the  stock ;  enter  every  chamber 
where  dynamite  will  be  placed,  and  mark  out  and  plan 
the  work  for  each  miner  who  enters.  Few  men  hold 
in  the  palm  of  their  hand  so  much  human  life. 

The  introduction  of  electricity  is  rapidly  changing 
the  life  in  the  mines ;  the  breaker  boys  are  gradually 
disappearing,  motor  trucks  are  replacing  the  mules, 
and  the  most  fascinating  spot  now  for  a  visitor  to 
stand  is  in  the  center  of  the  machine  shop,  where 
wheels  and  bands,  bars  and  bolts  are  in  repose.  One 
man  sits  on  a  small  platform,  watching  a  clock,  and 
when  a  small  bell  rings  he  places  his  foot  on  a  pedal, 
his  hand  on  a  lever,  and  all  is  astir;  coal  rushes  down 
the  troughs  in  the  breakers,  cars  start  on  many  levels, 
and  apparently,  as  if  by  magic,  the  coal  is  hoisted  in  to 
the  breaker,  crushed  by  the  crusher,  and  sifted  in  its 
downward  flight ;  finally  it  lands  in  an  oblong  square 
box  which,  with  one  judicious  turn,  is  shifted -to  a  spur 
track  and  becomes  one  of  a  trainload,  ready  to  start 
on  its  journey.  This  means  fewer  men  of  the  old  type 
— more  of  the  scientific,  mechanical,  trained  experts. 

The  old  style  building,  composed  of  wood,  with  a 


158  THE    PATH    OF  LABOR 

roof  made  of  tin,  is  gradually  giving  way  to  the  pretty 
cement  house.  More  workmen  are  owning  homes. 
Much  of  this  prosperity  follows  in  the  wake  of  suc- 
cessful temperance  campaigns. 

But  in  the  best  camps  an  atmosphere  of  tragedy 
broods  over  all  the  homes ;  again  and  again  a  large 
black  vehicle  appears  on  the  main  street ;  children  stop 
playing,  women  rush  to  the  doors,  some  watching 
every  turn  of  the  wheels,  as  though  daring  the  equip- 
age to  stop  at  their  door;  others  covering  their  eyes 
and  stuffing  their  ears  in  order  not  to  hear  the  wheels 
stop.  But  stop  it  always  does,  and  then  one  witnesses 
the  true  kindness  of  the  human  heart.  One  look  is  in 
all  eyes,  and  that  look  translated  into  English  spells, 
"It  might  have  been  mine ;  it  might  have  been  mine." 
Here  are  generosity,  sympathy  and  sacrifice.  The  high 
death  rate  in  the  mining  regions  is  due  to  crowded  con- 
ditions, recklessness,  carelessness ;  the  inability  of  the 
foreigner  to  understand  English  and  read  signs,  fur- 
nishes the  foundation  of  social  and  religious  life  and 
activities. 

The  life  generates  wonderful  characteristics.  I  was 
visiting  in  one  home  when  the  subject  of  thank- 
offering  gifts  came  up,  and  I  learned  that  the  lady  of 
the  house  had  four  times  in  her  life  taken  a  boy  whose 
parents  had  been  killed,  educated  him  and  brought 
him  up  to  manhood  as  a  thank-offering  because  her 
husband  had  not  been  killed  when  a  large  accident 
had  taken  its  toll  of  life. 

I  remember  a  wedding,  when  a  young  couple  began 
their  married  life  by  taking  into  their  home  a  four- 


IN    LUMBER    CAMPS   AND    MINES  159 

year-old  boy,  whose  father  had  been  killed  and  whose 
mother  had  unconsciously  breathed  the  fumes  from  a 
burning  culm  pile  and  been  sulphurized.  I  remember 
a  devotional  service  conducted  by  an  English  woman 
who  came  over  here  a  bride,  and  who  four  times  in 
her  life  had  seen  a  strong  man  leave  her  breakfast 
table  to  return  before  noon  mangled.  Her  theme  was, 
"The  Promises  of  God."  They  had  not  failed  her 
although  her  father,  her  husband,  and  two  sons  had 
left  her  to  struggle  alone,  with  a  small  daughter  to  sup- 
port. 

My  choicest  memory  revolves  around  a  large  camp 
where  a  church  had  been  a  flourishing  institution  in 
the  early  days,  and,  during  a  change  of  population, 
had  been  reduced  to  only  four  members ;  for  forty 
years  it  struggled  along  but  never  quite  died.  Finally 
a  girl  was  sent  there  to  labor,  not  a  Daughter  of  the 
Revolution,  but  a  Daughter  of  old  Poland.  She  revived 
every  department;  became  the  minister  and  also  the 
lady  of  the  manse.  One  Children's  Sunday,  after 
services  in  the  church  tastefully  decorated  with  laurel, 
when  the  speaking  was  over  and  the  babies  had  been 
baptised  we  were  descending  the  steps  when  we  met 
a  small  girl  balancing  a  large  infant  brother  in  her 
arms.  We  stopped  to  admire ;  she  looked  up  and  said, 
"Didn't  me  Peter  do  fine?  I  baptised  him  all  day  Sat- 
urday so'se  he  wouldn't  act  scart."  After  our  laugh, 
Miss  S.  turned  to  me  and  said,  "There  is  the  problem  ; 
if  you  give  them  the  best  you  have  to  share  in  leader- 
ship and  equipment,  you  will  find  the  big  sisters  able 
to  handle  the  obstreperous  Peters !" 


160  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

Mines  and  the  War 

At  the  outbreak  of  European  hostilities,  America 
turned  to  the  mining  world  for  four  great  leaders  to  repre- 
sent, not  American  industries,  but  the  American  spirit  of 
brotherhood : 

Herbert  C.  Hoover,  Chairman  of  Commission  of  Belgian  Relief, 
W.  L.  Hannold,  Director  in  America  for  Belgian  Relief, 
Edgar  Rickard,  Asst.  Director  in  America  for  Belgian  Relief, 
J.  V.  N.  Dorr,  Chairman  of  "Belgian  Kiddies," 

all  mining  engineers. 

At  the  time  of  America's  entrance  into  the  World  War 
the  miners  responded  with: 

Company  A, 
27th  U.  S.  Engineers, 

the  first  military  mining  unit  to  be  organized  in  the  United 
States  Army,  and  today,  posted  in  most  of  the  great  min- 
ing corporations,  is  to  be  found  this : 

NOTICE 

Appreciating  the  fact  that  American  miners  and  smelters  are 
patriotic,  the  following  suggestions  are  made  to  avoid  misunder- 
standing and  unintentional  wrong  conduct : 

Acts  and  words  permissible  in  peace  times  may  be  treasonable 
in  war  times. 

To  American  Citizens 

1.  Avoid  arguments  and  discussions.  They  lead  to  disturbances 
and  serious  trouble. 

2.  Act  considerately  toward  non-citizens  and  citizens  of  foreign 
birth. 

3.  Be  on  the  alert  to  safeguard  American  interests  by  reporting 
to  us  at  once  any  suspicious  actions  or  words. 

4.  Avoid  all  waste  of  time  and  material.  Wars  are  won  by 
serving  at  home  and  in  the  shop  as  well  as  by  soldiers  in  battle. 

5.  Guard   carefully  against  fires.     Report  carelessness   in  the 


IN    LUMBER    CAMPS   AND    MINES  161 

use  of  inflammable  and  dangerous  materials  and  the  accumula- 
tion of  waste  matter.    Keep  fire  buckets  and  barrels  filled. 

6.  Wherever  you  can  be  of  most  value  to  your  country  is  the 
place  for  you,  whether  it  be  in  the  mines,  the  mill,  the  smelter, 
the  refinery,  or  the  trenches. 

Then,  in  many  languages,  the  following: 

To  Non-Citizens 

You  come  to  this  country  voluntarily,  and  have  made  your 
living  among  us.  Act  during  these  times  so  that  the  citizens  of 
America  will  welcome  your  countrymen  in  the  future. 

Avoid  any  act  or  word  that  may  arouse  suspicion. 

Obey  the  law.    Talk  English,  if  possible,  and  don't  argue. 


VI 

JUSTICE  AND  BROTHERHOOD 

WALTER   RAUSCHENBUSCH 


I  have  put  my  spirit  upon  him ;  he  will  bring  forth  justice  to 
the  Gentiles. 

He  shall  not  judge  after  the  sight  of  his  eyes,  neither  decide 
after  the  hearing  of  his  ears. — Isa.  3 :  3. 

A  bruised  reed  will  he  not  break,  and  a  dimly-burning  wick 
will  he  not  quench. 

He  will  not  fail  nor  be  discouraged,  till  he  have  set  justice 
in  the  earth. — Isa.  42 : 1-4. 

Not  by  might  nor  by  power,  but  by  my  spirit,  saith  Jehovah  of 
Hosts. — Zech.  5:6. 

"The  greatest  service  which  the  church  can  render  society  just 
at  present  would  be  to  contribute  the  spirit  of  Jesus  to  the  ideals 
which  are  provocative  of  discontent." 

The  church  as  a  social  organization  is  expected  to  develop  a 
quality  of  life  on  the  part  of  its  members  which  shall  express 
itself  in  their  economic  and  political  activity  in  accordance  with 
the  principles  of  Christianity. — Shailer  Mathews. 


VI 
JUSTICE  AND  BROTHERHOOD 

It  is  a  significant  and  cheering  fact  that  the  Council 
of  Women  for  Home  Missions  has  proposed  to  its 
great  constituency  to  study  the  condition  of  Labor. 
A  generation  ago  such  a  study  would  have  seemed 
foreign  to  the  aims  of  home  missions  and  remote  even 
from  the  purpose  of  Christianity.  Today  every  ad- 
vance in  the  historical  and  psychological  understand- 
ing of  religion  shows  us  how  deeply  the  religious  life 
of  any  age,  or  sex,  or  race,  or  social  class,  is  influenced 
and  determined  by  the  social  relations  of  that  human 
group.  If  we  want  to  give  effective  moral  and 
religious  help  to  boys,  we  must  realize  them  as  boys, 
different  from  girls  and  different  from  men,  with  a 
moral  code  of  their  own  ranging  from  the  ethics  of 
savagery  to  the  longings  of  sainthood.  In  the  same 
way,  if  we  want  to  understand  working  people  and 
offer  them  the  divine  help  of  Jesus  Christ,  we  must 
take  them  as  working  people. 

To  entitle  this  course  of  study  to  a  place  in  Home  Mis- 
sion work  it  must  be  linked  up  with  Christianity.  It 
would   not   be   enough    to   get   correct   economic   or 

165 


166  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

sociological  ideas  about  labor  conditions.  We  must 
see  the  situation  of  the  working  people  and  their  rela- 
tion to  the  other  social  classes  through  the  mind  of 
Jesus  Christ.  They  are  not  merely  labor  force,  or 
citizens,  but  potential  children  of  God  who  have  a 
right  to  a  full  salvation,  and  all  our  thinking  about 
them  and  our  actions  for  them  must  have  a  redemptive 
purpose  and  quality  in  them.  That  alone  makes  our 
study  Christian. 

Beginnings 

The  first  home  mission  enterprise  was  the  aposto- 
late  of  the  Twelve  when  Jesus  sent  them  two  by  two 
through  the  villages  of  Galilee  (Matthew  9,  32  to  10,  42). 
It  was  prompted  by  a  fresh  realization  gained  by 
Jesus  of  the  condition  of  the  working  people  in  their 
homes.  This  filled  him  with  a  deep  compassion.  The 
people  reminded  him  of  a  leaderless  and  undefended 
flock  of  sheep,  scattered  and  with  flanks  torn  where 
wild  beasts  had  preyed  on  them.  (The  Greek  words 
imply  this.)  Under  the  stress  of  this  impression  of 
the  wretchedness  of  the  common  people,  Jesus  created 
a  new  leadership  for  them,  which  became  the  germ  of 
the  Christian  Church  and  the  forerunner  of  all  organ- 
ized missionary  work.  Home  Mission  work,  there- 
fore, only  returns  to  its  first  beginnings  when  it  deals 
with  the  condition  of  the  working  classes. 

Women  have  a  capacity  to  understand  people  which 
often  baffles  and  surprises  men.  But  only  if  they  are 
interested  in  people.  If  their  heart  is  not  engaged, 
they  may  be  cruelly  blind  and  prejudiced.     They  will 


JUSTICE   AND    BROTHERHOOD  167 

do  their  best  work  only  if  the  sympathetic  spirit  of 
Christ  is  behind  their  womanly  intuitions,  especially 
in  understanding  any  social  class  other  than  their  own. 
Jesus  had  an  astonishing  inclination  to  cross  conven- 
tional lines  under  the  impulse  of  his  boundless  inter- 
est in  people.  It  was  not  fitting  for  a  Jew  to  have 
dealings  with  Samaritans  or  pagans;  it  was  not  proper 
for  a  teacher  to  talk  with  a  woman ;  it  would  never  do 
for  a  holy  man  to  eat  with  a  publican  or  have  a  woman 
of  the  street  touch  him.  But  Jesus  did  all  that.  His 
sense  of  humanity  was  too  strong  for  class  lines  to 
check  it.  Moreover,  he  always  discovered  something 
great  or  fine  in  these  improper  people  —  faith  in  a 
pagan  captain,  gratitude  in  a  Samaritan,  upwelling 
love  in  a  prostitute.  As  a  prospector  strikes  gold  in 
the  rock,  so  Jesus  struck  God  in  men.  He  was  a  dis- 
coverer and  connoisseur  of  human  beauty  because  he 
loved  people.  At  rare  moments,  when  we  look  into 
the  eyes  of  a  baby  or  kneel  by  our  dead,  we  have  a 
mystic  realization  of  the  divine  core  hidden  in  our 
humanity.  This  spiritual  divination  was  the  constant 
possession  of  Jesus.  If  we  have  walked  with  him  for 
years,  we  should  share  his  sense  of  the  worth  of  per- 
sonality and  his  disregard  for  any  class  lines  that 
separate  man  from  man.  If  we  accept  the  lines  drawn 
by  sinful  pride  and  contempt,  we  are  of  this  world  and 
ourselves  in  need  of  salvation. 

Now,  if  Jesus  were  set  in  the  midst  of  a  modern  city, 
could  anything  keep  him  away  from  the  working 
people?  How  long  would  it  take  him  to  be  accepted 
as  their  friend  and  as  one  of  them?     What  would  lie 


168  THE    PATH    OF   LABOR 

say  if  he  found  that  few  of  them  go  to  the  churches 
called  by  his  name?  Should  not  we  do  what  he  would 
do  if  he  were  bodily  in  an  American  city?  The  Church 
is  the  body  of  Christ;  it  is  here  to  carry  his  thoughts 
and  impulses  into  collective  action.  Its  feet  must  go 
where  his  mind  is  eager  to  get. 

A  sincere  understanding  of  the  working  class  is  not, 
however,  a  wholly  pleasurable  experience.  One  does 
not  come  out  of  it  without  some  scars  on  his  soul. 
Indeed,  if  we  follow  up  this  study,  it  may  change  our 
view  of  the  whole  social  world  we  live  in,  and  it  may 
shake  our  self-satisfaction.  It  may  lead  us  to  a  deeper 
and  more  lasting  repentance  than  that  which  we 
experienced  when  we  first  became  Christians.  We 
may  begin  with  the  idea  that  we  have  something  to 
give  to  the  working  people,  and  discover  that  we  our- 
selves need  what  they  can  give  us. 

History  of  Labor 

Have  we  ever  realized  that  a  large  part  of  the  his- 
tory of  labor  is  written  in  the  history  of  slavery?  Was 
not  our  own  so  built?  All  civilizations  previous  to 
our  own  were  built  on  slave  labor.  The  slaves  were 
sometimes  the  bulk  of  the  working  class.  The  free 
laborers  were  dragged  down  by  the  competition  of 
slave  labor,  and  were  always  in  danger  of  slipping 
down  into  the  slave  class  through  debt,  bad  harvests, 
war,  or  oppression.  The  serfdom  of  the  Middle  Ages 
was  a  modified  form  of  slavery.  The  unfreedom  of  the 
workers  has  always  been  a  social  device  for  exploiting 
them ;  it  enabled  their  masters  to  coerce  and  drive 


JUSTICE   AND   BROTHERHOOD  169 

them,  to  pay  them  little,  and  to  cloak  with  the  sem- 
blance of  legal  right  any  cruelty  and  hardness  in  their 
treatment.  Serfdom  lasted  in  Russia  till  1861,  and 
remnants  of  it  in  parts  of  Western  Europe  till  the 
eighteenth  and  nineteenth  century. 

In  the  colonization  of  America  the  problem  con- 
fronted the  upper  class  colonists  how  to  secure  manual 
labor  in  the  new  world  to  do  for  them  what  the  Euro- 
pean peasant  did  at  home.  The  Spaniards  promptly 
enslaved  the  Indians  and  depopulated  entire  islands 
and  coast  sections  by  their  cruel  hunt  for  labor.  It 
was  a  sad  disappointment  for  North  American  planters 
that  the  Northern  Indians  could  not  be  forced  to  bear 
the  yoke  of  slavery;  they  would  slay  their  masters  and 
die  first.  It  was  to  supply  a  tractable  and  cheap  labor 
supply  that  the  African  slave-trade  plied  its  work.  It 
is  not  so  generally  known  that  during  our  colonial 
period  perhaps  half  of  the  white  immigrants  came  here 
in  a  state  of  peonage,  as  "indentured  servants,"  and 
were  sold  at  the  wharf  or  hawked  about  the  villages  in 
chains,  and  their  labor  sold  for  a  term  of  years. 

In  short,  slavery  in  some  form  has  been  an  almost 
universal  solution  of  the  labor  problem  throughout 
history;  it  has  prevailed  down  to  our  own  times  and 
has  deeply  affected  the  social  and  political  history  of 
our  own  country.  Christian  civilization  did  not  find  it 
intolerable  to  treat  the  laborers  thus.  The  Church 
itself  for  centuries  owned  slaves  and  serfs  to  till  its 
great  lands.  Only  in  modern  times  did  it  rise  to  the 
conviction  that  it  is  inconsistent  with  Christianity  to 
deprive  a  fellow-man  of  freedom  in  order  to  appro- 


170  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

priate  his  labor  product.  On  the  whole  the  Church 
accepted  slavery  as  part  of  the  social  order,  softening 
its  hardness  but  not  striving  to  end  the  institution. 

Thus  in  slavery  and  thralldom  the  working  people 
have  been  the  human  basis  of  civilization.  By  their 
unfree  labor  others  enjoyed  wealth,  education,  pleas- 
ure, and  splendor.  Indirectly  we  are  all  beneficiaries 
of  their  age-long  oppression,  and  it  is  wholly  just  that 
we  all  should  bear  some  of  the  evil  results  of  slavery, 
and  strive  to  heal  the  injustice  that  our  forefathers 
inflicted.  The  South  is  still  industrially  backward 
because  a  group  of  Southerners  thought  black  slave 
labor  more  profitable  than  free  white  labor.  The 
white  immigrants  coming  to  the  North  from  some 
parts  of  Europe  are  only  a  short  remove  from  serf- 
dom ;  if  they  bear  the  evidences  of  unfreedom  in  their 
bodies,  their  intellects,  and  their  customs,  we  should 
not  wonder  and  despise  them.  They  are  what  their 
exploiters  have  made  them.  In  God's  eyes  humanity 
is  a  family  unit.  The  debt  contracted  by  one  continent 
is  paid  by  another,  and  the  sins  of  one  generation  are 
the  doom  of  the  next.  Our  labor  situation  today  can 
not  be  understood,  either  from  a  scientific  or  from  a 
religious  point  of  view,  unless  we  bear  in  mind  the 
ages  of  unfree  labor  from  which  the  working  people 
have  just  emerged,  and  the  institutionalized  evil  and 
collective  guilt  stored  up  by  all  this  mass  of  oppression. 

Is  slavery  still  in  effect  anywhere  today?  What  is 
meant  by  peonage?  What  is  the  moral  difference  be- 
tween slavery  and  the  contract-labor  system  in  prisons? 
Has  the  war  temporarily  introduced  compulsory  labor? 


JUSTICE   AND    BROTHERHOOD  171 

Is  there  any  danger  that  the  freedom  of  the  working 
class  in  Europe  will  be  permanently  cut  down  by  na- 
tional necessities  arising  after  the  war?  If  the  protec- 
tion of  the  law  were  withdrawn,  is  there  any  danger  that 
the  feebler  portion  of  the  working  class,  e.  g.,  Negroes,  or 
immigrants  in  mining  districts,  could  be  reduced  to  un- 
free  labor  once  more? 

Land  and  Labor 

Turning  now  to  our  own  time,  we  can  roughly 
divide  the  working  people  into  those  who  labor  in  the 
country  on  the  land,  and  those  who  work  in  mines  and 
shops  and  stores  in  industry  and  commerce. 

The  condition  of  the  workers  in  agriculture  depends 
on  their  relation  to  the  land.  If  they  own  a  proper 
amount  of  land  and  work  it  themselves,  they  arc  ideal 
workmen,  and  usually  the  very  type  and  strength  of 
their  nation.  This  has,  on  the  whole,  been  the  blessed 
condition  of  the  farmers  in  our  country.  This  normal 
condition  of  our  farmer  class  has  kept  up  the  wages  of 
the  workers  in  the  cities,  assimilated  the  immigrants, 
and  made  a  republican  form  of  government  workable. 
Among  this  class  of  people  who  were  both  workers  and 
owners  of  property,  our  free  American  churches  have 
done  their  best  work,  and  here  still  are  the  chief  roots 
of  their  strength. 

In  France  the  Revolution  substituted  peasant  pro- 
prietorship for  feudal  land  tenure,  and  the  grip  of  the 
peasant  on  his  land  is  one  of  the  causes  for  the  tenacity 
and  moral  strength  developed  by  France  during  the 
present  war.    On  the  other  hand,  where  the  effects  of 


172  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

the  French  Revolution  did  not  pervade,  in  England 
and  Ireland,  in  Italy  and  Austria-Hungary,  in  Rou- 
mania,  in  East  Prussia  and  in  Russia,  great  land 
owners  still  own  the  soil.  The  proprietors  either  farm 
the  land  by  agricultural  laborers,  or  they  let  it  to 
tenant  farmers  who  employ  the  laborers.  There  are, 
then,  in  these  countries  two  or  even  three  layers  of 
population  on  the  land,  who  must  all  get  their  living 
from  it,  and  as  the  upper  class  has  much  power  and  the 
lower  very  little,  the  division  of  the  proceeds  is  not  by 
right  but  by  might,  and  bears  hard  on  the  agricultural 
workers. 

Does  this  concern  religion?  If  the  Old  Testa- 
ment means  anything  to  us,  it  surely  does.  The 
Mosaic  Law  laid  great  stress  on  the  principle  that 
every  Israelite  family  was  to  have  its  allotment  of 
land,  which  could  never  be  permanently  alienated. 
When  great  estates  developed  as  in  heathen  nations, 
the  Hebrew  prophets  regarded  this  as  a  fatal  menace 
to  their  nation.  When  the  working  class  is  in  posses- 
sion of  the  land,  it  has  the  possibility  of  thrift,  free- 
dom, and  moral  health.  When  a  class  of  wealthy 
proprietors  own  the  land,  those  who  do  the  labor  are 
subjugated,  unfree,  exposed  to  partisanism  and  moral 
decay.  We  have  a  clear  demonstration  of  both  facts 
in  the  history  of  Ireland.  Landlordism  for  centuries 
ruined  Ireland  and  debased  a  gifted  race.  Since  1870 
a  series  of  laws  have  been  passed  enabling  the  peasants 
to  acquire  their  holdings.  The  effect  of  this,  combined 
with  cooperative  buying  and  selling,  has  been  a  social 
and  moral  regeneration  of  the  people. 


JUSTICE   AND   BROTHERHOOD  173 

The  land  is  God's  fundamental  gift  to  the  people.  It 
is  the  material  basis  for  all  life.  A  just  method  of 
common  possession  and  of  distribution  for  use  is  the 
A  B  C  of  justice  and  fraternity.  To  allow  a  privileged 
group  to  monopolize  the  land  and  thereby  to  control 
and  exploit  those  who  labor,  subtly  subverts  all  demo- 
cratic institutions  and  makes  genuine  Christian  rela- 
tions of  the  social  classes  practically  impossible. 
Home  Missions  have  an  up-hill  road  where  the 
country  working  class  is  deprived  of  the  basis  of  life 
and  liberty. 

What  shall  we  say,  then,  to  the  fact  that  our  country 
is  steadily  drifting  into  the  system  from  which  other 
countries  are  emerging?  In  1890  twenty-eight  out  of 
one  hundred  farms  in  the  United  States  were  operated 
by  tenants ;  in  1910  thirty-seven  out  of  one  hundred 
farms — an  increase  of  thirty-two  per  cent,  in  twenty 
years.  The  Commission  on  Industrial  Relations  found 
"not  only  that  the  economic  condition  of  the  tenant 
was  extremely  bad,  but  that  he  was  far  from  being 
free,  while  his  future  was  regarded  as  hopeless.  Badly 
housed,  ill-nourished,  uneducated  and  hopeless,  these 
tenants  continue  year  after  year  to  eke  out  a  bare 
living,  moving  frequently  from  one  farm  to  another 
in  the  hope  that  something  will  turn  up.  Without  a 
large  family  the  tenant  cannot  hope  to  succeed  or 
break  even,  so  in  each  tenant  family  numerous  chil- 
dren are  being  reared  to  a  future  which  under  present 
conditions  will  be  no  better  than  that  of  their  parents, 
if  as  good."  We  are  allowing  a  growing  part  of  the 
American  farmer  class  to  become  tenants  and  peas- 


174  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

ants.  The  tenants  can  have  no  interest  in  the  perman- 
ent institutions  of  the  community,  the  roads,  the 
schools,  or  the  churches.  Prosperous  farmers  are  the 
best  soil  for  church  life;  shifting  tenant  farmers  are 
very  poor  soil;  and  mere  laborers  who  come  and  go 
with  the  harvest  season  are  drifting  human  sand. 

The  tenant  system  is  bound  to  progress  rapidly 
henceforth.  As  fast  as  our  farm  land  is  occupied  and 
as  the  population  grows,  agricultural  land  gains  a 
monopoly  value  and  rapidly  rises  in  price.  The  tenant 
is  unable  to  buy  a  farm  and  remains  a  tenant.  Farm 
land  becomes  an  attractive  investment  because  of  its 
unearned  increase  in  value.  We  shall  henceforth  have 
a  great  body  of  big  and  little  landlords  who  live  at 
ease  on  their  investments  and  support  the  churches, 
and  a  lot  of  tenants  and  laborers  who  toil  for  a  mere 
living  and  are  out  of  gear  with  the  churches.  Our 
system  of  land  ownership,  which  was  fine  as  long  as 
there  was  plenty  of  new  land,  will  now  curse  us  by  the 
monopoly  element  in  it,  unless  we  can  find  some  system 
by  which  the  collective  ownership  by  the  people  is 
asserted  and  the  unearned  value  is  taken  by  the  com- 
munity which  creates  it. 

This  is  one  of  the  great  questions  which  the  future 
asks  of  our  nation :  Will  America  use  God's  unex- 
ampled gift  of  land  for  the  use  of  all  who  labor,  or  for 
the  enrichment  of  those  who  have  ceased  to  labor? 
The  moral  and  religious  future  of  the  nation  depends 
on  the  answer. 


JUSTICE   AND    BROTHERHOOD  175 

Home  Mission  Duty 

Meanwhile  Home  Mission  duty  lies  all  around  those 
who  live  in  the  country  and  the  villages.  They  must 
go  after  the  classes  which  are  in  danger  of  being  un- 
churched, the  tenants  and  laborers  and  immigrants, 
who  are  new  to  the  community  and  unrelated  to  the 
churches. 

Here  we  run  against  the  limitations  of  local  denom- 
inational churches.  Their  vision  is  usually  bounded 
by  their  own  membership.  They  do  not  see  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole,  nor  do  they  have  a  clear  sense  of 
religious  obligation  toward  those  who  do  not  belong 
to  them.  The  practical  result  is  that  each  church 
holds  to  its  permanent  and  propertied  families,  but 
that  the  poorer  and  more  transient  families  and  single 
individuals  are  nobody's  concern,  and  remain  aliens  in 
the  midst  of  God's  commonwealth.  This  is  the  way 
the  working  class  drops  out  of  the  churches. 

When  we  have  the  well-to-do  and  the  poor  in  our 
communities,  a  class  contrast  is  set  up  which  it  is  not 
easy  to  bridge,  and  which  acts  as  a  permanent  denial 
of  Christ's  law  of  love  and  fellowship.  Country  com- 
munities are  crammed  with  petty  class  pride,  which 
is  part  of  original  sin  and  directly  neutralizes  Home 
Mission  work.  Working  people  will  rather  stay  away 
from  church  than  be  snubbed  or  patronized ;  this  is 
a  sign  of  moral  health  and  an  assertion  of  human 
equality.  A  sincere  study  of  the  social  problems,  com- 
bined with  a  better  acquaintance  with  Jesus  Christ, 
would  scour  the  pride  from  our  souls  which  tarnishes 
and  rusts  them. 


176  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

Industrial  Laborers 

We  turn  now  from  the  agricultural  to  the  industrial 
working  class.  Modern  civilization  is  distinguished 
for  its  enormous  development  of  industry  and  com- 
merce, and  the  absolute  and  relative  size  and  weight 
of  the  working  class  engaged  in  them.  In  contrast 
with  the  scattered  agricultural  laborers,  the  industrial 
workers  are  trained  to  work  and  act  together,  and  have 
growing  intelligence  and  education,  and  strong  class- 
consciousness.  We  have  not  won  the  world  for  Christ 
if  this  great  class  is  alienated  from  the  Christian  religion. 

We  have  emphasized  the  fact  that  the  workingman 
in  agriculture  is  secure  and  normally  equipped  only  if 
he  has  a  fair  holding  of  land  of  his  own  on  which  he  can 
apply  his  labor  force  and  resources,  and  that  he  is 
exposed  to  exploitation  if  the  land  is  in  the  possession  of 
another  class.  Is  there  any  similar  distinction  in  the  lot 
of  the  industrial  laborers  ? 

During  the  later  Middle  Ages  the  artisans  in  the  free 
cities  of  Europe  developed  a  social  organization  fitted  to 
their  needs.  They  owned  their  tools  and  hedged  about 
the  skill  and  secrets  of  their  craft;  they  were  organized 
in  guilds  which  protected  the  individual ;  they  had  politi- 
cal power  in  their  local  community  to  put  a  stop  to 
profiteering.  Their  aim  was  to  secure  a  fair  price  for 
their  work,  to  assure  every  worker  his  raw  material  and 
his  customers,  and  to  shackle  commercial  greed  and  the 
desire  to  monopolize  trade.  The  Church  enforced  the 
ethical  ideas  and  customs  which  supported  this  industrial 
system.    This  handicraft  system  came  as  near  as  possible 


JUSTICE   AND   BROTHERHOOD  177 

to  giving  every  worker  the  same  comfortable  security  in 
his  trade  which  farmers  have  when  they  own  their  farms.1 

This  world  of  small  craftsmen  came  to  an  end  when 
power  machinery  displaced  hand  tools  and  craft  skill. 
The  business  class  gained  political  control,  and  broke 
down  the  guild  organization  and  the  protective  laws.  The 
world  of  independent  artisans  in  small  shops  was  gradu- 
ally transformed  into  a  world  of  capitalistic  employers 
and  proletarian  workingmen  working  in  evergrowing 
factories.  This  unique  historical  transition  in  economic 
life  has  been  called  the  Industrial  Revolution.  It  began 
in  full  force  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  is 
not  yet  complete.  Whenever  this  change  takes  hold  of  a 
new  section  of  the  world,  as  for  instance,  our  south- 
ern states,  or  Japan,  we  say  that  it  is  "becoming 
industrialized." 

Now  this  economic  change  causes  fundamental  moral 
and  spiritual  changes.  It  increases  material  wealth  and 
awakens  desires.  It  holds  boundless  possibilities  of 
wealth  before  the  possessing  classes,  sets  no  limit  to 
acquisition,  and  makes  material  goods  the  goal  of  life. 
It  has  made  the  Tenth  Commandment  a  dead  letter  and 
the  saying  of  Jesus  about  serving  either  God  or  Mammon 
a  riddle  which  few  can  guess.  There  has  been  a  great 
increase  in  practical  materialism  and  paganism. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  working  class  has  so  precarious 
a  hold  on  existence  that  they  too  have  to  concentrate  their 
attention  intensely  on  the  material  side  of  life.  They 
find  themselves  in  a  world  in  which  other  people  own  all 
the  opportunities  of  labor.  A  good  job  is  the  greatest 
favor  to  bestow  on  a  workman  because  it  is  his  sole  hold 

1  See   Thorold   Rogers,   Six   Centuries  of    Work  and    Wages. 


178  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

on  God's  earth.  His  wage  is  the  only  key  to  food,  home, 
and  recreation.  He  must  sell  the  working  force  of  his 
body  and  mind  and  soul  and  get  as  much  as  he  can  for  it. 

Wage-earners  must  make  their  bargain  with  people 
who  are  strong  by  right  of  possession,  while  they  them- 
selves have  a  stomach  that  gives  them  no  rest,  and  per- 
chance a  family  that  tugs  at  their  heart-strings.  Some 
employers  are  fair  and  kind ;  others  are  hard ;  in  general 
a  certain  average  of  wages  holds  for  such  and  such  em- 
ployment which  even  good  employers  cannot  better 
much.  For  the  vast  majority  the  rule  holds:  "Once  a 
workingman,  always  a  workingman." 

If  a  person  has  a  job  and  a  wage,  it  is  a  question  of 
vitality  and  capacity  whether  he  can  hold  on.  In  the 
country,  people  work  in  the  open  air.  In  shops  they  are 
exposed  to  insufficient  air-space  and  ventilation,  gases 
and  fumes,  fluff,  and  tubercular  fellow-workmen.  The 
machinery  sets  the  pace;  the  interest  of  the  employer 
is  in  a  maximum  output.  Physical  exhaustion  poisons 
the  body  with  an  accumulation  of  waste  products.  If 
the  worker  is  a  child  or  a  woman,  additional  elements  of 
strain  and  danger  are  obvious.  An  eight-hour  or  a  nine- 
hour  day  makes  the  difference  between  happiness  and 
misery.  Overtime  work,  unless  highly  paid,  becomes  a 
rankling  grievance.  In  many  industries  the  inexorable 
forces  of  power  machinery  are  a  permanent  menace ;  one 
moment  of  weariness  and  inattention,  and  the  tender  flesh 
is  cut  and  mangled.  These  risks  are  taken  at  so  much  per 
week. 

Employers  and  wage-earners  are  each  dependent  upon 
the  other,  but  their  interests  are  not  identical.     Their 


JUSTICE   AND   BROTHERHOOD  179 

relations  may  easily  become  antagonistic  and  break  out 
into  the  bitterness  of  open  warfare.  In  any  negotiations 
the  single  worker  is  nearly  powerless ;  only  if  organized 
can  they  hope  to  wrest  concessions  from  the  other  side, 
which  is  entrenched  behind  the  fortifications  of  property, 
trained  intelligence,  and  law.  Because  of  the  power  of 
trade  unions,  employers  have  often  done  their  utmost  to 
break  down  or  prevent  the  organization  of  their  men, 
though  they  themselves  are  always  highly  organized  and 
very  class-conscious.  The  men,  on  the  other  hand,  know 
well  that  the  failure  of  their  organization  hands  them  over 
to  the  mercy  of  their  opponents.  The  right  to  organize 
is  to  them  the  very  foundation  of  hope  and  liberty.  In 
other  countries,  Australia,  England,  Germany,  and 
France,  the  right  to  organize  is  generally  recognized ; 
our  own  country  is  very  backward  at  this  point.  Busi- 
ness on  the  whole  is  still  autocratic ;  it  does  not  concede 
within  its  domain  the  principle  of  democracy  and 
responsible  government. 

Present-Day  Conditions 

This  is  a  one-sided  summary  of  the  situation  and  it 
makes  a  sombre  picture,  but  our  best  statistical  informa- 
tion supports  it.  The  report  of  the  Commission  on 
Industrial  Relations  of  1915  is  the  latest  official  summary 
in  our  country,  and  would  repay  reading.  Only  in  a 
few  highly  paid  occupations  do  the  incomes  of  working- 
men  range  from  $1,500  to  $2,000  a  year.  Two-thirds 
to  three-fourths  of  adult  males  in  industrial  occupations 
earn  less  than  $15  a  week,  and  females  less  than  $8. 
Nearly  half  of  the  latter  earn  less  than  $6.     How  far 


180  THE    PATH    OF   LABOR 

could  we  ourselves  go  on  that?  An  exhaustive  investi- 
gation by  the  Immigration  Commission  (1909)  on  the 
earnings  in  coal  mining  and  other  basic  industries  showed 
that  the  combined  family  income  (average  size:  5.6 
members)  of  64  percent  was  less  than  $750,  and  of  31 
percent  was  less  than  $500.  Thirty  percent  eked  out 
their  income  by  keeping  boarders  or  lodgers,  and  what 
that  means  for  the  moral  and  spiritual  qualities  of  family 
life,  women  are  best  qualified  to  imagine.  Of  course 
the  war  has  temporarily  brought  very  high  wages  and 
prosperity  to  large  groups  of  workmen.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  rise  in  the  cost  of  living  for  years  past,  and 
especially  of  late,  has  cut  down  the  buying  value  of  the 
dollar,  and  has  automatically  impoverished  all  families 
with  stationary  incomes.  Since  1890  immigration  from 
England,  Germany,  France  and  the  Scandinavian  coun- 
tries has  almost  ceased.  Our  labor  conditions  have  a  bad 
reputation  in  the  progressive  countries  of  Europe. 

This  is  the  situation  in  our  great  country,  which  has 
a  lavish  equipment  by  nature,  an  energetic  people,  and 
only  a  relatively  light  population.  It  does  not  look  as 
if  it  were  God's  fault.  Great  Britain  has  been  one  of 
the  richest  of  all  countries,  farthest  advanced  in  indus- 
trialization, with  prolific  sources  of  income  from  over- 
seas trade  "and  colonies.  Yet  government  reports  have 
acknowledged  that  a  third  of  the  people  live  in  great 
poverty.  "Of  714,000  people  who  die  annually  in  the 
United  Kingdom,  686,541  die  poor  or  very  poor.  Only 
27,459  bequeath  any  property  worth  mentioning." ' 
Charles  Booth  counted  88.6  percent,  of  the  people  of  Lon- 
don among  the  poor. s    In  1904  one  out  of  every  three 

*  L.   G.   C.   Money,  Riches  and  Poverty,  p.   SI. 
'Life  and  Labor  of  the  People  of  London. 


JUSTICE   AND    BROTHERHOOD  181 

persons  dying  in  London  died  within  the  walls  of  a  poor- 
house,  a  hospital,  or  an  insane  asylum.  *  On  the  other 
hand,  one  and  one-half  percent,  of  the  population  of 
Great  Britain  held  before  the  war  property  valued  at 
nearly  thirty  billion  dollars,  and  in  our  country  two  per- 
cent, of  the  population  are  estimated  to  own  sixty  percent, 
of  the  wealth. 

Surely  the  poverty  of  the  poor  is  in  some  causal  con- 
nection with  the  wealth  of  the  old  aristocracy  in  Great 
Britain  and  the  new  aristocracy  in  America  and  vice 
versa.  The  only  honest  way  to  explain  the  situation  in 
all  industrial  countries  is  to  recognize  that  the  possession 
of  the  essential  properties  of  the  globe  has  enabled  a 
small  proportion  of  humanity  to  take  for  themselves  the 
larger  part  of  the  proceeds  of  labor,  paying  the  working 
people  only  the  minimum  on  which  they  can  live  during 
the  working  years  of  their  life.  It  is  no  wonder  that 
our  country  is  in  a  state  of  chronic  social  unrest,  with 
occasional  local  outbreaks  of  industrial  revolution,  and 
with  periodical  recurrence  of  hard  times  and  stagnation. 

All  this  contradicts  the  Christian  conception  of  moral 
relations  so  completely  that  every  Christian  intellect 
which  sincerely  faces  the  facts  must  be  deeply  disquieted. 
What  could  we  say  to  the  accusation  of  the  prophet  that 
"the  spoil  of  the  poor  is  in  your  houses,"  or  to  the  warn- 
ing of  James  that  the  cry  of  the  laborers  whose  earnings 
are  withheld  goes  up  to  God?  How  will  the  social  con- 
dition of  the  Christian  nations  stand  the  scrutiny  of  God's 
justice  if  those  who  toil,  have  not.  and  those  who  toil  not, 
have?  Such  power  and  wealth  as  the  upper  classes  have 
today  can  be  justified  only  on  the  supposition  that  they 

*  Fabian   Tracts,   No.   5,   p.   13. 


182  THE    PATH    OF   LABOR 

are  stewards  for  the  rest  of  the  nation.  But  if  masses 
of  their  productive  fellow-workers  are  left  in  poverty, 
what  about  this  irresponsible  system  of  stewardship? 
Or  again,  how  do  our  conditions  square  with  the  law  of 
love  and  the  Christian  conception  of  human  fellowship? 

I  have  summed  up  these  facts  once  more  because  we 
can  see  our  Home  Mission  task  in  all  its  tremendous 
seriousness  and  sadness  only  when  we  face  the  social 
condition  of  the  agricultural  and  industrial  working 
classes.  Our  local  communities  are  groups  with  a  spirit- 
ual unity  of  life ;  our  nation  is  a  great  social  unity. 
Therefore  we  all  share  in  the  responsibility  for  any 
wrong  done  unless  we  have  done  our  utmost  to  prevent 
it.    And  who  has  done  that? 

Not  only  all  individuals,  according  to  the  measure 
of  their  intelligence  and  social  influence,  but  all  social 
institutions  bear  responsibility  for  any  such  permanent 
evil  in  the  community.  Our  legislatures,  our  courts, 
and  the  press  are  directly  responsible  for  the  fact  that 
our  nation  has  for  many  years  steered  straight  into 
these  undemocratic  and  unchristian  conditions. 

And  what  about  the  Church?  It  has  for  ages  con- 
trolled the  moral  teaching  of  mankind.  It  has  been 
richly  equipped  by  the  Christian  nations  with  archi- 
tecture, income  and  educated  leaders.  In  our  country 
no  other  organized  moral  force  can  compare  with  it. 
Its  effectiveness  in  overcoming  the  seductive  customs, 
the  false  philosophy,  and  the  financial  entrenchments 
of  the  liquor  traffic,  shows  what  the  Church  can  do 
when  it  employs  in  earnest  even  a  part  of  its  vast 
resources.     If  now,  it  has  for  centuries  allowed  the 


JUSTICE    AND    BROTHERHOOD  183 

peasants  of  Europe  to  be  submerged  and  exploited  by 
the  landowners,  and  if  it  has  allowed  modern  civiliza- 
tion to  repeat  the  same  wrong  in  new  forms  in  modern 
industrialism,  it  must  bear  responsibility  in  proportion 
to  its  power. 

The  chief  charge  against  the  Church  is  not  positive 
wrong-doing  but  inaction.  In  his  description  of  the 
great  judgment  Jesus  makes  that  the  sole  charge 
against  the  good  people:  "I  was  hungry,  naked,  and 
in  prison,  and  you  did  nothing."  The  working  class 
might  continue  this  and  say  to  the  Churches:  "I  was 
landless,  unemployed,  unorganized,  overworked,  un- 
derpaid, and  exploited,  and  you  were  not  aware  of  it." 
The  great  State  Churches  of  Europe  have  always  been 
submissive  to  the  governments,  and  the  governments 
themselves  have  been  controlled  by  the  possessing 
classes.  The  free  churches  of  America,  Great  Britain, 
and  the  British  Colonies  are  constitutionally  and 
theoretically  under  the  control  of  the  common  people, 
but  in  reality  they  are  dominated,  financially  and  intel- 
lectually, by  the  able,  intellectual,  and  well-to-do. 
These  naturally  voice  their  point  of  view  and  their 
philosophy  of  life,  and  align  the  churches  on  their  side. 
When  once  the  two  great  social  groups  exist  and  are 
widely  separated  by  their  habits  of  life,  this  result  is 
inevitable. 

This  class  alignment  has  been  further  accentuated 
by  a  fact  of  tremendous  significance :  the  working  peo- 
ple have  largely  dropped  out  of  the  membership  of 
the  churches.  This  fact  became  undeniable  in  the 
eighties.     It  holds  true  of  all  industrialized  countries. 


184  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

In  no  great  industrial  city  have  the  churches  been  able 
to  hold  the  working  people  in  their  natural  propor- 
tions. 

Causes 

Why  not?  Doubtless  a  combination  of  causes  are 
at  work.  (1)  Working  people  follow  their  job.  They 
move  often,  and  thereby  drop  out  of  connection. 
(2)  In  big  cities  church  life  is  expensive.  Calls  for 
contributions  are  frequent  and  insistent.  When  a 
family  has  seven  hundred  dollars  a  year  there  is  not 
much  of  a  margin  for  the  higher  needs.  Food,  cloth- 
ing, and  shelter  come  first.  In  some  time  of  trouble 
a  family  stays  away  and  does  not  come  back.  (3)  The 
atmosphere  of  a  church,  with  its  adornments,  its  social 
manners,  its  style  of  public  speech,  does  not  seem  to 
offer  an  attractive  habitat  for  workingmen.  Foremen, 
teachers,  clerks,  stenographers  find  it  congenial. 
Artisans  and  factory  workers  seem  often  to  shrink 
from  it.  They  hardly  care  to  come  to  a  church  even 
if  a  socialist  or  labor  man  speaks  there.  The  American 
"public  forums"  and  the  British  Brotherhood  and 
P.  S.  A.  meetings  attract  them.  But  these  have  a 
different  spiritual  atmosphere.  (4)  Many  working- 
men  are  immigrants.  They  bring  the  evil  memories 
and  antagonisms  of  Europe  with  them,  and  bunch  all 
the  churches  in  general  condemnation,  just  as  we  per- 
haps do  with  "socialists  and  anarchists."  (5)  Among 
the  most  intelligent  and  class-conscious  workmen 
there  is  an  increasing  feeling  of  deep  antagonism  and 
resentment.     They  feel  that  the  Church  has  always 


JUSTICE   AND    BROTHERHOOD  1S5 

stood  in  with  the  oppressors  of  labor  and  is  paid  for 
its  silence ;  that  sincere  preachers  are  "soft-pedalled" 
or  lose  their  jobs;  and  that  the  efforts  of  the  Church 
to  conciliate  the  working  people  are  efforts  to  rope 
them  in  and  utilize  them  for  church  needs,  and  not 
sincere  efforts  to  cooperate  with  them  for  their  better- 
ment. 

In  recent  years  the  increasing  study  of  the  social 
sciences,  the  pressure  of  the  labor  problem  in  our 
national  life,  the  spread  of  socialism,  and  all  the  har- 
rowing facts  in  the  condition  of  the  people,  have 
invaded  the  consciousness  of  many  able  and  devoted 
ministers,  and  laymen,  and  women.  They  have  suf- 
fered the  agony  of  a  vicarious  repentance  on  behalf  of 
the  church  and  have  taken  up  a  prophetic  ministry  to 
arouse  God's  people  from  their  blindness  and  their 
connivance  in  the  wickedness  of  our  social  order.  This 
effort  has  cost  some  of  them  dear,  but  it  has  not  be<  a 
in  vain.  There  has  been  a  spiritual  awakening  in 
large  sections  of  the  Church. 8  This  has  immediately 
reacted  on  the  attitude  of  the  working  class  leaders. 
In  cities  where  even  one  or  two  conspicuous  ministers 
have  spoken  fearlessly  and  steadily  for  the  just  inter- 
ests of  labor,  a  kinder  feeling  has  come  to  prevail,  and 
even  a  realization  of  the  great  help  the  Church  may 
yet  give. 

Needs 

The  church  in  recent  years  has  not  been  lacking  in 
earnest  efforts  to  win  back  and  serve  the  working 
people.     It  has  built  costly  institutional  plants.     De- 

8  See   Rauschenbusch,   Christianizing   the  Social  Order,   Part   I. 


186  THE    PATH    OF   LABOR 

voted  ministers  and  social  workers  have  broken  their 
health  and  their  hearts  over  the  task.  Evangelistic 
efforts  have  carried  the  old  gospel  to  the  poor  with 
the  energy  of  strong  personalities  and  efficient  organi- 
zation.   Yet  the  situation  itself  has  not  changed. 

Something  deeper  is  needed.  We  ourselves  need  a 
baptism  of  repentance  and  a  new  attitude  toward  life. 
We  have  long  silently  accepted  and  endorsed  stand- 
ards of  moral  conduct  which  were  the  product  of 
high-grade  selfishness  and  the  active  cause  of  much 
of  the  sin  and  misery  of  the  world.  We  did  not  realize 
how  far  the  business  morality  of  the  world  is  away 
from  the  law  of  Christ.  We  need  a  new  revelation 
of  the  mind  of  Jesus  Christ  and  the  same  vision  of 
the  Kingdom  of  God  which  lived  within  him.  As  long 
as  we  inwardly  consent  to  the  present  social  order, 
we  are  hardly  good  enough  to  carry  the  gospel  of 
Christ  to  the  working  people.  When  we  gain  enlight- 
enment, our  attitude  to  the  working  people  changes. 
We  come  to  understand  and  pardon  their  sins  and 
frailties,  and  to  love  them  with  the  same  sense  of 
trust  and  respect  which  Jesus  felt  for  the  people.  And 
then  we  shall  find  that  we  have  spiritual  access  to 
them,  and  get  response  when  we  speak  to  them  of 
their  deeper  needs. 

Whether  we  can  win  them  back  to  the  Church  I 
do  not  know.  Probably  not  unless  there  is  a  demo- 
cratic reconstruction  of  society  which  will  close  the 
great  gulf  that  is  always  fixed  between  Dives  and 
Lazarus,  and  will  substitute  for  the  two  antagonistic 
classes  which  now  confront  each  other,  a  single  class 


JUSTICE    AND    BROTHERHOOD  187 

in  which  all  work  by  hand  and  brain  and  serve  the 
common  needs,  and  in  which  all  have  property  rights 
in  the  common  resources  of  nature  and  in  the  accumu- 
lations of  civilization.  Such  a  social  order  would  be 
the  natural  basis  for  a  Christian  relation  among  men, 
and  would  set  up  no  barriers  to  good-will.  In  our 
present  social  world  Christianity  is  a  divine  misfit  and 
is  involved  in  inconsistencies  and  compromises.  The 
church  and  the  working  class  would  both  be  set  free 
if  the  wrongs  inflicted  on  the  laborer,  and  the  wrongs 
by  which  he  reacts  against  wrong,  were  healed  through 
Christ's  law  of  justice  and  brotherhood." 


•  For  a  fuller  interpretation  of  Christ's  social  laws,  se>?  the  author'* 
Social  Principles  of  Jesus,  Association  Press,  New  York,  £916,  Theology 
for  the  Social   Gospel,    Macmillan.    1917. 


188  THE    PATH    OF    LABOR 

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Saleswomen  in  Mercantile  Stores. — Butler.  Charities 
Publication  Committee,  N.  Y. 


BIBLIOGRAPHV  189 

Six  Centuries  of  Work  and  Wages. — By  Thorold  Rogers. 
Social  England. — By  Traill. 

Street-Land. — Davis.     Small,  Maynard  Co.,  Boston. 
The  Ancient   Lowly. — By   C.   Osborne   Ward.     2   vols. 

$2.00  each. 
The  Church  and  the  Wage  Earners. — By  Thompson. 
The  Granger  Movement. — By  S.  J.  Buck.    $2.00. 
The  Immigrant  and  the  Community. — By  Grace  Abbott. 

The  Century  Co. 
The  Labor  Movement. — By  Harry  F.  Ward.     $1.25. 
The  Labor  Movement  in  America. — By  R.  T.  Ely.    $1.25. 
The    Living    Wage    of    Women    Workers. — Bosworth. 

Longmans,  Green  &  Co.,  N.  Y. 
The  Nezv  Encyclopedia  of  Social  Reform. — Bliss. 
The  Rural  Life  Problem  of  the  United  States. — By  Sir 

Horace  Plunkett.    $1.25. 
The  State  and  the  Farmer. — By  L.  H.  Bailey.    $1.25. 
The  Social  Unrest. — By  John  Graham  Brooks.     75  cents. 
The  Survey  Magazine. — New  York,  N.  Y. 
Woman  and  Labor. — By  Olive  Schreiner.     $1.25. 
Women  and  Work. — By  H.  M.  Bennett.    Appleton,  Pub. 
Women  are  People. — By  A.  Miller.     Doran,  Pub. 
Women  and  Social  Progress. — By  Scott  Nearing,  Ph.D., 

and  Nellie  M.  S.  Nearing.    The  Macmillan  Co..  Pub. 
Women  and  the  Trades. — Butler.     The  Charities  Publi- 
cation Committee,  New  York. 
Women    Workers    and    Society. — McLean.       McClurg, 

Chicago. 
Women  and  War  Work. — By  Helen  Frazer.    $1.50.     G. 

Arnold  Shaw,  Pub.,   1735  Grand  Central  Terminal, 

New  York,  N.  Y. 


190  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

Women  in  Industry. — By  Grace  Abbott.     Appleton,  Pub. 
Young  Working  Girls. — Woods  and  Kennedy.     Hough- 
ton, Mifflin  &  Co.,  Boston. 

Mountain 
The  Article  by  Miss  De  Long  in  the  Survey  for  March, 

1917. 
Christian   Reconstruction   in   the   South. — By    H.    Paul 

Douglass.     $1.50.     Pilgrim  Press,  Boston,  Mass. 
The  Rebuilding  of  Old  Commonwealths.     Chapter,  The 

Forgotten  Man. — By  Walter  H.   Page,  Doubleday, 

Page  &  Co.,  New  York,  N.  Y. 
The  Southern  Highlanders  and  Other  Articles. — By  John 

C.  Campbell,  Asheville,  N.  C. 
The  Southern  Mountaineers. — By  Dr.  Samuel  T.  Wilson. 

Literature  Department,  Presbyterian  Home  Missions, 

156  Fifth  Ave.,  New  York,  N.  Y. 
Our  Southern  Highlanders. — By  Horace  Kephart.    The 

Outing  Publishing  Co.,  New  York,  N.  Y. 

Races 
Christian   Reconstruction   in   the   South. — By   H.   Paul 

Douglass.     $1.50.     Pilgrim  Press,  Boston,  Mass. 
Following  the   Color  Line. — By  Ray   Stannard   Baker. 

$2.00.    Doubleday,  Page  &  Co. 
In  Black  and  White.    An  Interpretation  of  Southern  Life. 

—By  H.  L.  Hammond.    $1.25.    Fleming  H.  Revell 

Co.,  New  York,  N.  Y. 
Negro  Life  in  the  South. — By  W.  D.  Weatherford.    50 

cents.    The  Association  Press,  New  York,  N.  Y. 
Negro  Year  Book. — Division  of  Records  and  Research 

Tuskegee  Inst.,  Tuskegee,  Ala. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  191 

Race  Adjustment.— By  Kelly  Miller.  $2.00.  Neale  Pub. 
Co.,  Washington,  D.  C. 

Southern  Women  and  Racial  Adjustment.  The  Slater 
Foundation. — By  L.  H.  Hammond.  Pamphlet. 
Free  upon  application  to  J.  H.  Dillard,  Charlottes- 
ville, Ya. 

The  Basis  of  Ascendency. — By  Edgar  Gardner  Murphy. 
$1.25.     The  Macmiflan  Co.,  New  York,  N.  Y. 

The  Story  of  the  Negro. — By  Booker  T.  Washington.  2 
vols.    Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.,  New  York,  N.  Y. 

LUMBER  AND   MINING 

Anthracite  Coal  Communities. — By  Peter  Roberts. 

Black  Trail  of  Anthracite. — By  S.  R.  Smith. 

Coal  Mining  Described  and  Illustrated. — By  T.  H. 
Walton. 

Higgins,  a  Man's  Christian. — By  Norman  Duncan. 

The  Timber  Supply  of  the  United  States. — By  U.  S.  De- 
partment of  Agriculture,  Forest  Service.  Circular 
166.  Gifford  Pinchot,  Forester.  Issued  July  10, 
1909. 

Slav  Invasion  and  Mine  Workers. — By  Peter  Roberts. 

POETRY 

Songs  of  the  Work-a-Day  World. — By  Berton  Braley. 
Songs  of  the  Work-a-Day  World.    The  Forest  Ranges. — 

By  Berton  Braley. 
The  Parable. — James  Russell  Lowell. 
The  Singing  Man. — Josephine  Preston  Peabody. 
The  Spell  of  the  Yukon.     The  Pines;  The  Woodcutter, 

Rhymes  of  a  Rolling  Stone;  The  Logger. — By  Robert 

W.  Service. 


192  THE   PATH    OF   LABOR 

The  Toiling  of  Felix. — Henry  Van  Dyke. 
Up  in  the  Maine  Woods. — By  Holman  Day. 

FICTION 

All  Among  the  Loggers. — By  C.  B.  Burleigh. 

A  Story  of  a  Piece  of  Coal. — By  E.  Appleton. 

Big  Timber. — By  B.  W.  Sinclair. 

Black  Diamonds. — By  S.  Dyer. 

Boss  of  Wind  River. — By  A.  W.  Chrisholm. 

(Pertaining  to  Logging  Camps  and  River  Drives) 
Cavanaugh — Forest  Ranges. — By  Hamlin  Garland. 
E.  John  Dorn,  Promoter. — By  C.  Banks. 
Freckles. — By  G.  S.  Porter. 
Girl  of  the  Limberlost. — By  G.  S.  Porter. 
Heart  of  the  Red  Firs. — By  A.  W.  Anderson. 
In  the  Carquinez  Woods. — By  Bret  Harte. 
King  Spruce. — By  Holman  Day. 
Luck  of  Roaring  Camp. — By  Bret  Harte. 
Man  from  Glengarry. — Ralph  Connor. 
Prescott  of  Saskatchewan. — By  Harold  Bindloss. 
River  Man. — By  Stewart  E.  White. 
The  Blazed  Trail. — By  Stewart  E.  White. 
The  Cabin. — By  Stewart  E.  White. 
The  Parish  of  the  Pines.— By  Thos.  D.  Whittles. 
The  Pass.— By  Stewart  E.  White. 
Told  in  the  Hills. — By  Ryan. 
Trail  of  the  Axe. — By  Ridgwell  Cullum. 
Twenty  Years  a  Lumberjack. — By  T.  Hall. 
Ways  of  the  North. — By  Warren  Cheney. 
When  the  Forests  are  Ablaze. — By  H.  B.  Judsen. 
When  Wilderness  ivas  King. — By  Randall  Parish. 
Year  in  a  Coal  Mine. — By  J.  Husband. 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 

JAN     3  ^3f«ft  2  9  1362 


MAR  2  1 1943 


JAN  s  1 1S64 


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EA  LD-UftU ' 


Form  L-9-35wi-8,'28 


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lifl* 


SEf>9    1968 


3  1158  01%"^' 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILIT 


AA    001  164  189    1 


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